Fast Day 282 October 27 2012 {Gardens and Deer}

Gardens and Deer

Exile songs of Deer in Babylon,
it is so sad;
they come around and eat the flowers that we
try to grow;
those they ignore are cut
by mowing madness soon…
The deer eat the hosta down to the stem,
leaving a nest of wispy pre-raphaelite quills
like precocious
and flippant rosetti…
like Ophelia pennants – thin
and hazarding the wind.

So I waited up for them one night,
gun in hand,
to stop their eating of the flowers that we
try to grow;
and I shall cut them down
by rifle and the moon…
beyond midnight they came, all three of them,
we unflinching stood staring each other... they spoke:
mystery gard’ner!
bone-cave keeper!
bounteous god, let us see
your garden immortality!

--
needless to say, I let them eat the rest of the gardens.

Fast Day 281 October 21 2012 {VelocityDC Dance}

VelocityDC Dance

juiced anatomy
of infinite dance
disclose nimble offices
of supple body -
quick and presto
prayers like incense smoke
from sweating bodies rise
and promise unending pleasure! -
ah, titanic in their lies!

seminal movement,
steam powered and punk,
length and stroke unite!
my feet on fire!
moment locomotive…
the store of love unties…
diluvian torrent affection,
enwrapp’d the muse’s thighs!

--
notes
diluvian  -  an adjective for "flood" usually used in "ante-diluvian" meaning "before (Noah's) flood", hence of great antiquity and pertaining to the pre-Noachian covenant, and anything else.

enwrapp'd  -  since the "en-" has the meaning on "in", I left out the extra "in" and the line means "enwrapp'd in the muse's thighs."

Written after attending the VelocityDC Dance Festival at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington D.C. on October 20, 2012.

Fast Day 280 October 14 2012 {Beekeepers}

Beekeepers

scarlet clover
sowed in October
in the orchard twice;
try and keep the hens out,
they pick every green leaf

and totally ignore
barley by the hellebore,
which grows now quite tall -
but what will the bees? eh?
when all the clover's gone?

comb honey
brings no money...
sez the Michigan Farmer;
but comb sales have been brisk...
all's left is candled junk...
and common sense for fools.

--
pix:  http://wallacefamilyapiary.yolasite.com/

Fast Day 279 October 6 2012 {The Times, The Morals}

The Times, The Morals

Climax in a spasm
thrusting uncontrolled and
irritated beyond endurance…

women, they say, may experience
multiples – a shattering one right after
another,  shameless…

But I just screw up my face
and expostulate! just one!
but what an explosive design!

and like everyone jumps like
they wuz sleeping on erotic firecrackers!
three people going down in an elevator...

Gesundheit!…  says a old lady nearby;
God bless you!...  sez newspaper holding guy;
searching for tissue, Thanks, sez I.

--
note

Someone asked me, so I had better say that it was a sneeze... in an elevator... with three people in it, one of which was I.

Fast Day 278 September 29 2012 {Ancient Hymn to Pan}

Ancient Hymn to Pan

 O, Pan of the forest!
Protector of the herds:
helper of working men!
Tillage and harvest and herding,
how many times have you ignored
frail mortals!

Now I come before thee
with oil and honey and wheat bread,
praying for strength and fulfillment
of my human longing, and with purpose
to keep thy great worship
mahoganney, pure, dark...

Archbishop of the woodlands,
large crozier with a stag’s head,
well-pearled with antlers!
Piper of the moonbeams
who hymns us our equal God!...
Arcadian dreams!

Fast Day 277 September 22 2012 {My Daughter From Eurasia}

My Daughter From Eurasia

So high I am on acid, so drunk and falling down: O, Eurasia!
Intoxicating cider from faithful Alma Ata -
grandfather and grandmother apple of the Kazakhstan!
O, fair one! The orchards of your soul!
Hesperides!
Maid of Inis-Avalon!
The spray of your hair and the plumule of your sleeping eyes!

Intermixing of elixirs of the sov’reign fruits, liquor
smoke, and tablets of wandering religions, where
Buddhists from Cathay rejoiced with wand’ring Christianity!
Peaceful science, cultivars resplendent!
The Blessed Isles!
Learned, curious, romantic!
Astronomy of your beauty and music of your voice!
--
notes

My attempt to out-Coleridge Coleridge.

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 275 September 7 2012 {Labor Day 2012}

Labor Day  2012

The rain will descend,

then comes the drought;

we’ll take up our canoe and carry it

to the garage where it will winter,

but spring follows the snow

and we shall put it into the water again

so we may come and go by the river

and visit the islands,

and all the places

where the wild things are

awaiting us…

The sun bakes the ground,

then come the rain;

we’ll harrow and scythe the gardens again

and leave them to hibernate;

the hibiscus will bloom again

and the deer will eat the hasta down to stems;

we may not return to the river

this time… this future

the sun rising in new horizon,

and you and I have defeated

the alien gods…

Fast Day 274 September 1 2012 {The Film "Hugo"and a Political Convention}

The Film "Hugo" and a Political Convention

The very failures to which they lead,
through causes unforeseen,
are as beautiful as stunning success,
when shown upon the screen.

The arcana of the cinema,
applied by chemistry,
through deeply laid principles and appliance
resolve our inquiry.

Roman rotations upon the clock,
white arms of odalisque,
and Hero's pipes join clepsydra -
around the temple whisk.

The automaton convention claps
in synchronized adulation,
and smiles break on well-oiled lips
to mislead a nation.
--

Fast Day 273 August 25 2012 {The Years of Toxic Sleep}}

The Years of Toxic Sleep

Naiads of the river nymphs of the bureaucracy,
dryads of the city-county and manticore of our lives,
sweet medicine of mandragora and poppy of Cyprus:
O, the sleep of Reason!

Religions of wahhabi bulldozers, running on
delusional diesel of 'Uzza, Lat, and Manat, spreading
toxic water and damming aquifers, torturing aqueducts:
O, the sleep of Faith!

Feet quick to spill blood, feet slow to pilgrimage:
ferriers and blacksmiths who deform the holy word
between hammer of their soul and anvil of their own desires.
O, let the mu'ezzin cry:
O, believers! 
Sleep is better than this Freedom!

--
written as intolerant hard-liners attack Sufi mosques and shrines in Libya.
again, they are urged on by our "friends", the Saudis.

muezzin  - the caller to prayer    a Turkish form.

Fast Day 272 August 18 2012 {Sickness in Goray}

Sickness in Goray

Sickness, a sense of morbid,
came over me unaware;
it drained the light from day
and illuminated the night
with an eerie glowing sense
of the House of Usher!

What shall I cry?
and where shall I flee?
as the grass withers in
the drought and the flower fades,
- lilies of the field! -
under the breath of Adonai!

--
notes

on being sick
Goray is Isaac Singer's town of Goray.

Fast Day 271 August 11 2012 {Languish Out Loud}

Caligula's Ships on Lake Nemi

Languish Out Loud

I feel dissuaded from elegance
of style, mind, and manner;
I speak a quick, garbled texting
of harsh primitive
brutish, naked words
too cute
to be
forgotten...

Like Caligula's Nemian ships
built for candy and childish steps of
myst'ries of th'Egyptian goddess;
sunk by old age or
Claudius' decree:
dark moon
for the
misbegotten...

--
notes

What appears to be elegant disappears into the fog, just as Caligula immense pleasure ships built for worship of Isis sank into the Lake of Nemi, and others were sunk by Claudius' decree.

I use this to describe a conflicted sense of language - the educated versus the texting brief chop-chop rebus type of approach. I am not talking about slang or hip-hop or anything like that, for I consider urban slang to be very sweet.
I sense a diminution of my being - of anyone's being - into a smallness when language is so circumscribed... even if one has hundreds of Facebook friends. All of us are classical Romans and poets potentially, and all of us are dumb as driftwood if we do not constantly strive to "diversify" our language environment.

QUERY
should we write the last 3 sentences:

2 cute
2 B
4 gotten

(we do mention "texting" earlier.)

Fast Day 270 August 4 2012 {Pilot-Bread}

Pilot-Bread

Herring and pilot-bread for dinner!
Steamboat travelers on rough Michigan sea!
Not loaf bread nor bran
no water crackers, too,
viscidity
indigestability
attested by Graham.

Pilot-bread cut and pilot-bread fried,
easier eating, mixed with butter or lard,
or in boiling foam
of the fat of deep pork dipped,
yet a banquet
for those distressed
far from their home.
--
notes
memoirs of me sailing days upon the Great Inland Seas!

Graham -   of Graham cracker fame; he speaks on the evils of gluten and wheat breads.

Fast Say 269 July 28 2012 {The Wanderer}

The Wanderer

I will sing of him -
maybe -
I will sing a song of him,
Maybe no one will care -
maybe it will not matter
to the world at large,
but it shall matter to me!
Grande Grenouille
the Big French Frog
sits now with his mouth silent
looking out at the transient garage
through summer and through fall:
he wishes to speak...
words fail.

It is not important -
maybe -
to sing songs with painted words,
painted on retaining walls:
words nakedly in passion
hidden in the trees -
words I alone can sing-song!
Grenouille, bon ami,
a Frenchy from Poitou,
parents québecois et russe,
sets the scene and yells "action!" in his dream,
through winter and through spring
he wishes to love...
tears fail.

Perhaps - well,
it may not matter!
Perhaps - well,
I will merely sing of him,
Chikuhikun - The Axe,
who sat fearful now, his mouth closed,
in the madding crowd
and far, far away from man -
in solitude.
--
notes

grenouille  - a frog

Fast Day 268 July 21 2012 {Big Heart River}

Aerial View of the River's Mouth

Big Heart River

Hearts like fast canoes,
we portage where we haul the boats out
and move along the muddy trail,
until we come to the place where
the fish was caught that summer day.

Arms like cottowoods,
we unlade the fast canoes
into the small waters here, a mere
capful among the bull rushes;
we push them over white clay.

After many miles,
our breasts are covered in sweat
and our skin gleams in the setting
sun; we let our paddles run
to the place where houses are!

--
notes

Around and about Empire, Michigan

Fast Day 267 July 14 2012 {Be Still, My Heart}

A Saphiret Ring

Be Still, My Heart!

Oh, be still, my beating heart!
My love has gone away.
She said she's found another;
no longer can she stay!
I pawned my father's watch,
sold my mother's saphiret;
I gave her all my money...
be still, my beating heart!

May her memory disappear now,
and the odor of her hair!
my heart's endangered species,
a thousand miles of solitaire;
I suffered through my panic,
I endure the painful day,
I  walk the lonely nights;
Demon memory go away!

If we ever noonday meet,
if we stop to chat,
she's wears my old t-shirt now
and a yellow baseball cap;
I recall her clothes as lettuce leaves
tossed with my jeans on a chair,
in a salad of our passion,
mixed with gall and vinegar.


--
editing
11/12/2012 changed stanza 3 ll 5-6:
I recall them them (sic) as lettuce leaves
mixed with my clothes on a chair

and l 3:
 she's wears her shirt and jeans now,
 

Fast Day 266 July 5 2012 {I Did Not Forget...}

 Summer Holidays and Birthdays and Special Places

I Did Not Forget...

I did not forget your birthday, for I chose
to miss the feast of Punctuality,
an experiment in time to see
if anything would change -
but nothing did:
the world’s unchanging rumble, bouncing
off the subway tiles within my ears…
tedious eternity…

Dances and songs are born,
dances and songs die away;
Beauty will not last forever -
come along and see the stars!
Hey! Come along and dance!

Come here, my mother! Come here, my mother!
We are walking here; we are running here;
my younger brother and sister,
my younger brother and sister,
are crying now:
they think that they have lost their way:
sing them your intoxicating song,
a jewel from your Cretan crown!

This is the Father! This is the Father!
He comes in his nonchalant, ambling way,
looking very much preoccupied
by job reports and economic
information:
he will disguise his smile from us
until the very last minute, when
he scatters us with laughter!

Dances and songs are born,
dances and songs die away;
Beauty will not last forever -
come along and see the stars!
Hey! Come along and dance!

Older Brother and Sister coming along,
lightly bearing their wounds from casinos
of Afghanistan and of Iraq,
they keep their own private counsels
of their pain;
yet they come for the holiday;
they will dance, and they will sing
and will become nightingales!

Great-great-grandparents all across the street,
waiting for the infinite light to change,
straining to see their progeny:
is that my great-great-grandson there?!
great-granddaughter?
Waving to us like a great sea;
discarding death like a used Dixie cup,
they come to our birthday dance!

Dances and songs are born,
dances and songs die away;
Beauty will not last forever -
come along and see the stars!
Hey! Come along and dance!

--

Fast Day 265 July 1 2012 {Far Away}

Train From Far Away

Far Away

I come from Far Away,
where we drink the wine
even before the vines were created
in your Garden of Eden walmarts...
we do not wait for Creation!

You wear a plastic name
and speed about in steel,
dripping aluminium cobwebs
under the cowl of brilliant howling
immense and ponderous...

We eat the alien bread
baked in tholos shaped ovens
even before wheat was grown in fields,
but was only stars and rains of fire
that were our ersatz tears.

--
notes

Late getting this up; I was in terra incognita of the 1940s again.

Fast Day 264 June 24 2012 {Jim Dandy Morning}

Jim Dandy Morning

When I woke up this morning,
was unlike any other day...
when I opened my eyes,
I felt the blue go away;
and this was Monday morning
when the landscapers come
with the yell of lawn mowers
barely heard above
the cacophony,
the symphony,
the consternation,
of the leaf blowers.

Noon-day demon far away,
leaving on a jet airplane,
slipped past the TSA
with my sorrows in a bottle
in his carry-on bag:
in a little toiletry bag,
with tooth brush and shampoo
and all the meds:
grey lady zoloft,
blue niagara,
and sacramental
vicodin there, too.

Why the jet plane? Why the bags?
Traveling in his submarine,
Noon-day don't need no suit...
he's hip...
ready to boot!

When I come home, his brother's there
come from the TV,
come from the air!
yelling the business,
yelling the news!
yelling the weather,
selling smokes and booze!
using fear that maims...
selling disability claims!
using fears of health...
selling schemes of wealth!

Weak morning shine,
oh, weak daylight!
tepid water'd-down sun...
weak tequila sun...
like some star was drunk last night,
did something really stupid,
and cannot will the paparazzi day...
cannot will the day... away.
--

Fast Day 263 June 17 2012 {On The Road Again}

The Early Path

On The Road Again

When the brothers and the sisters, having

heard that Paul was back, back, back in town

they ran down the road to the Three Taverns

which was the venue for the camp meeting,

where I was a roadie and got scale:

United in a bond of common faith

we lived in peace and love and harmony:

no distinctions of power or fortune,

in the days of heavy metal martyrdom;

and I set up the amplifiers.

I drive the bus… I’ve been the head roadie

since the band split up and the elder James

stayed in Jerusalem the Memorious;

Paul now plays reggae in Illyricium,

and breeds Friday eve confusion.

No canned heat and  no coke to wash away

this growing season of tombs and monuments,

that disturb our dreams and forget the great

times – like Ovid in his sorry exile:

back when all had wicked chops!

--

notes

Saint Paul is the focus

Ovid  - the poet who was sent into exile somewhere on the Black Sea coast

Fast Day 262 June 10 2012 {A Friend To Thee}

Pearl Millet

A Friend To Thee

I'll be a friend to Thee,
unlike the wheat I'll never be;
on level land,
on high plateau...
where wanders my emmer soul.

I'll be a lover to thee,
unlike the rice I'll never be;
slowly swimming
Afric, Asian...
ancient grasses of the plain.

I'm the modern age to Thee,
rustic millet, no longer free!
orphan cereal,
homeless smile...
where old graveyards feed the stile.

 --
 notes
emmer - a form of spelt
homeless smile  -  there are gaps in it: discontinuous and uncomfortable
stile - a turning entryway to an area; the feeding of it implies a good deal of use.

It is paradoxical to me, as I am good and bad to Thee, and our relationship is complex.

Late getting this up, because I was in the 1940's.
--

Fast Day 261 June 2 2012 {God Speed The Plow}

God Speed The Plow

I am the Buddha, Buddha  of Bamiyan

and I am fully cooked,

in marinade Afghanistan…

being re-incarnated

fast ‘s any man…

into Kabul Smokey Joe

who kick the gong…

stepped on a land mine:

Smokey Joe is legless now,

Cokey Joe is fine…

legless in Bamiyan.

I am the Buddha, Buddha of Bamiyan

and I was much destroying

by the Taliban…

but that don’t stop me,

I just go downtown

get me an old .44

from young dead Man;

Smokey Joe is legless

but I got my head

got it together… in Bamiyan!

Now you see me! Now I not there!

Bamiyan boddhi sleeper

vanish into air!

like a hermit praying

back in his lair;

get me my pick-em-up truck

search high and low

Buddha Joe is legless now-

ain’t that always so?

legless in Bamiyan!

--

notes

The Plow is a metaphor for the Crutch.

Bamiyan - site of the great statues of the Lord Buddha destroyed by the Taliban 

There are references to the Opium in Afghanistan and its effects.

--
pix:  http://karakaregokyuzu.blogspot.com/

Fast Day 260 May 27 2012 {Memorial Day In Goshen}

Memorial Day In Goshen

Holidays are thick with ghosts enough

within the barbecue of spirits:

dripping fats and smokey flavor pork

and collard greens and sweet cornbread,

with broken husks like china plates.

And in this festival sat Pharoah, tail-gating,

feasting on the porcine anatomy

and giving gifts of smells and smoke

to the spirits of his ancestrals.

Pharoah ruled in the Fayum of Bombay Beach,

by the ancient spirit lake of Cahuilla,

by the Temple of “The Luck O’ The Irish”

where liquor went for sapphires

on the shore of the Salton Sea.

Moses said when they first came here,

there was nothing but gang-banging and drugs

and shootings in the cities, in El Centro,

but now it was time to go…

If Pharoah did not agree, plagues would afflict

the land:  the waters would not engender life;

the waves would conceal firearms and guns,

overflow the banks and encroach your ground,

killing first-born, male and female.

Eight million fish died in one day alone

in the piscicidal divine rage on Bombay

Beach:  Death’s tilapia silver carpet

rolling gleam like undulant beer can empties!

Well, in Chicago alone  ten people

died of forty-three that were shooting:

holiday barbecues

zombies in Miami

we’re gonna miss these days sometime…

when Pharoah change his mind...

--

notes

Goshen - the area in Egypt where the Israelites lived

Bombay Beach - a vestigial city on the south eastern shore of the Salton Sea

Fayum - an area of lower elevation in Egypt where Lake Fayum is located.  As it is a depression, there is a parallel to the Salton Sink - where is the Salton Sea - in California.

Cahuilla - the Salton Sink anciently was the lakebed of Lake Cahuilla

Luck O' The Irish - a quondam bar and watering hole in the heyday of the Salton Sea

piscicidal  -  pronounced pis-ki-side-al , meaning the killing of fish. The Salton Sea began to experience massive fish die-offs in the late 1970's due to a number of factors.

This Memorial Day past, 43 were shot and 10 died in Chicago, and there was a real zombie attack in Miami, and I feel very much 'Resident Evil-frame of mind'.

The battle to save the Salton Sea in ongoing. The California Supreme Court most recently hammered another nail into its coffin, however, and water will not be diverted to maintain it. The Salton Sea is in a low depression called the Salton Sink. It has been filled with varying amounts of water over hundreds of years, anciently being an extension northward of the Gulf of California.
It's most recent incarnation was caused by a break in 1905 in the irrigation system supplying water from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley in California.

It's all about death society and holidays! 

This poem marks the accomplishment of 6 years of this blog. I finally got home from my parents' place  - who are in their 90's and have no internet access - and got this up. 

I have another due for this Saturday, the 2nd of June.

I realize that a lot of this poem requires some familiarity with thje Salton Sea and Bombay Beach, but they are metaphors for the large nation, and there is info on Google and Wikipedia.

#260

I shall be a little late getting #260 up on the blog. I shall be at my parents who do not believe in new-fangled computer things.
--

Fast Day 259 May 13 2012 {Mothers' Day 2012}

 Nobori Battle Flags

Mothers' Day 2012


from beyond the moon, or the Milky Way,
the robins come each spring in robin time -
which lasts until the goldfinch nesting comes -
Susan scrubs winter from the balcony,
and plants the first pansies, as colorful
as Japanese nobori battle flags!

this drama recurs with movement calm as sleep:
the magic of the robin’s nest, as we
give up that porch of sweet spring and winter
divide, giving them the place for four weeks
while balcony flower boxes are stacked
everywhere that sun is available!

we await young robins, we unemployed
warriors recruited by Shimada
of the Seven Samurai, battling
the nest-thieving doves’ mindless banditry:
driving them off with well-placed blows and shouts,
which are the fruits of their insolence and crimes!
when we end our vigil in June,  we smile -
having drunk a tonic of the wilderness !

The nest in 2012

--
notes

I am putting this up early, since it is Mothers' Day today. I had this poem and the one about the engaged couple, which was a papal commission... well, not a papal commission, but a commission, so I had a superfluity of the lyrical this week.
This is for week 5/13 through 5/19, so number 260 will be in week 5/21 through 5/27, which would mark 6 years.

This poem compares pansies to the Japanese battle flags called nobori, and presupposes a little familiarity with the film masterpiece The Seven Samurai.  The Magnificent Seven just will not suffice.
In the Seven Samurai, the samurai warrior Shimada Kanbei gets together a band of seven unemployed samurai to defend a peasant village against bandits.
Doves are paralleled to bandits, because doves are dirty and cannot even build nests.