Fast Day 292 January 1 2013: Joyful Season

 

Joyful Season

For most of this undancing year,
for Easter,  Candle-time, and Michaelmas,
may the mercy of the Lord -
or the scarcity of liquor - keep us sober ,
but let us wassail this Christmas eve!

I do not want for busyness
nor diligence in summer, spring, and fall;
but the holly of the season –
or the holm, the ivy, and the bay festooned -
make love spring up like tender plants!

Porter, punch, and the hot negus
turn our minds to your beauteous romance:
we hear the carol of the Waits -
we remember then to give thanks for thee,
Joseph - humbled -  and cherry tree.

--
notes

We are giving thanks to Mary, mother of Jesus, and refer to the story of Joseph and the cherry tree: Mary asked Joseph to get her some cherries from the tree, and Joseph - in a bad mood - replied that the fellow that got her in a family way should get those cherries. At this, the cherry tree bent over and bowed down, bringing its branches and fruit within Mary's reach.

negus  -   a type of hot punch.

the Waits  - these were the town criers, who had their own types of songs to sing in Christmas. These songs are vanished and the tunes and structure are unknown.
--

The Poetry: Living Words

I have decided to do more writing... about "writing", meaning poetry; or "The Poetry" as I megalomaniacally exclaim it, for it is an art form that stands on its own; it is not the lyrics that accompany a hit song, like shabby groupies waiting for the Music and The Musician.

The poetry is "a doing" or "something a-doing".
Nowadays we prefer to use the Passive Voice, and say "something being done" or "something that was done", but I think we should reject those hyper-logical forms for the old Passival, and say like Jonson that "something is a-doing" or like Austen that "something is doing".
To our way of thinking, this leaves an ambiguity between the active and the passive, but if you try it, you'll see the ambiguity soon disappear.

That is a good thing for the poetry, for it does away with the idea that a poem is a static and unmoving thing.

What good is Homer if no one re-interprets it? What good Shakespeare? What good Beowulf or the Nibelungenlied?
The words may not change, but the voice does, the emphasis mutates, the ambience evolves, the emotions may be changed. The words remain the Polar Star about which the constellations of voice, feeling, and imagery revolve.
As the poetry is "a doing", it is the most ancient of the creations of man: no other behavior is named The Doing.

The poetry is swimming in life's ocean as the billions of facets of the reflecting surfaces of the water  choreograph a simulacrum of eternity; it is an odyssey with one's companions upon a vessel of our own making.
The non-poetic is being moored at the dock... or I should say "mooring at the dock"...

Be verbs! Be action words and phrases! Even in our sleep and dreams, be the ongoing and the everdoing, for we live in a time of suffocation. Run and breathe.
--

Fast Day 291 December 25 2012: Three Kings Dreaming

 

Mountains and Rivers

Three Kings Dreaming

The silence of the desert, and its desolation
broken by the automatic  fire of the voice
of a hobbled camel braying in the endless night;
led me to think of the Creation, and its stories:
gold, frankincense, and myrrh are elements,
the elemental bones of the world!
Over the features of the deeply cold
winter solstice moves the spirit of God
and there are stirrings of the beginnings
of desire and the valent bonds of being;
mountains reproduce
stirred by rivers’ touch.
By our three gifts, things will start anew!
By this day we call Nowell,
tidings of good news to tell!

--
notes
Nowell - old spelling of Noel

Fast Day 290 December 22 2012: Newtown

Red Breasted Geese

Newtown

white ladies ballet across the skies,
snow quilts cover up the night;
cold to the tongue, quick to the eyes,
painting the bracken tarlatan and white.

seasonal  kids supernumerary
for Nutcracker Sugarplum -
costumed swarm of little fairie,
oblivious of the next scene to come:

fear under the temblor of firing gun,
tufted marshes once spared from axe;
hand on shoulder, they cry and run:
geese carrying demise upon their backs.

--
notes

white ladies    -   snowflakes

braken       -     plural of brake - as in canebrake, a thick network of canes.  The singular is brake, and the plural vowel a seems to be modified, and is often spelled "bracken" . When speaking, I use long A for the singular and a short E for the A in the plural.

tarlatan       -    coarse stiff white weave fabric;  the snow actually "paints the tarlatan braken white" but we express it somewhat differently in the poem.



seasonal kids supernumerary -   the local ballet kids who dance in the Christmas presentation of The Nutcracker Suite, usually as sugarplum fairies.

fairie   -   means the realm of the fairies and is not a typo.

The destruction of innocence is compared to the destruction of the habitat of winter geese
--

Fast Day 289 December 15 2012 {The Gardener Says}

 Le Vieux Jardinier    par Guillaume Van Strydonck

The Gardener Says

The Gardener says:
The northern wind comes
and interrupts the trees
closely spaced within our garden,
ties and unties the laces
of the branches interweave -
like combing the snarls
from a child's hair -
and tosses the mixed fruits:
cherries and peaches,
from tree to tree
faster than the presto eye
can follow.

The west wind is the metronome,
the east wind brings the storm,
the south wind is an amulet called "azure"
that keeps us safe from harm.

--

Fast Day 288 December 9 2012 {The Gardener Passes}

The Gardener Passes

Now the pain blooms with surprising petals,
and the gladiolus of illness
loom large upon the furrows of his despair.
We who dug and cultivated
are harrowed in our time
are we not?

Plow, dig, harrow, spade, and rake;
pinch, pull, trim, slice, and scythe.
Now the surprising petals that form and weld
the chalice of the hibiscus covenant
bend not for us;
what next?

--
late getting this up
I was at my parents and away from internet.
my father loves his garden, and he shall never see another.

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 286 Nov 24 2012 {Seeds in the Wind}

Seeds in the Wind

the fly-away days, the fly-away nights;
when the wind is blowing,
tumbling and rolling;
squandering old-witch grass,
throwing seeds far and wide;
some find way to grow
as they have for a million years,
far, far older and more ancient
than the math of markets -
markets free or otherwise -
miracle logic:  loaves and fishes!

when Jesus played and Peter laughed
with  the water and the wine -
our fates first entwined -
and all float upon the wind
heedless, squandrous seed heads,
wafting, riding
on roller-coaster Creation,
until stopped by some obstacle,
and we pull back and ponder
germination and genesis;
suddenly students of quick and dead.

--
notes

Life can suddenly become serious, and we face birth and mortality at Thanksgiving time.

Fast Day 285 November 17 2012 {Where's That Jazz?}

Fats Waller

Where's That Jazz?


what is the jazz of the written word?
the poetry
the confabulation
the corrugated language roller-coaster
in the areas of my brain
where is the jazz?

where is the tongue of jazz?
the taste
the silver spit
of my pavlovian laboratory dog desire
in the areas of my mouth.
where is that jazz?

where's the genius of jazz
of the genital?
the intemperate,
the ancient yet modern lingua franca
of the orient seaports...
where's that savvy horn?

where's the fermentation of desire...
the wine of jazz?
the intoxicating
drink of that undiscovered seashore
with messages in bottles...
where's that jazz?

Fast Day 284 November 10 2012 {Cheers for November 6}

Cheers for November 6

Ya don' know what yer doin'
ya don' know what yer missin'
yer standing in hall
while Mama's in the kitchen;
she is fixin' eggs,
she is fixin' ham,
she is fixin' toast
with honey and with jam;
fer once in yer life
shut up and lissen:
close the front door,
slide across the floor;
don't ya go out
wildin' anymore!

Ya don't love Pedro,
ya don't love his kin;
yer drinkin' rum 'n' coke
when yer Daddy rushes in;
he gives you a look,
he gives you a blast;
ya know he is pissed
and he will whup yer ass!
the head bitch in charge
you ain't never been!
you're in a slump,
ya look like a chump;
don't ya feel that
yer life is snap trump!

Yer Aunt is in the bathtub,
yer aunt is in the hall,
yer aunt is gettin' dressed
and she's goin' to the Mall;
she don't have no hairpiece,
she doesn't have a weave,
and she's cool LaVern
we don't disbelieve;
she don't go by taxi-
she think it's too banal;
don't go by train,
don't sail by sea,
she be the Lady
invented prophecy!


----------
notes

snap trump  -   big and mean after effect of a "trump", which as yet is an undefined after-product of nastiness.

LaVern  - beautiful lady.

DC   -  a DC plane, an airplane made by Douglas Aircraft, such as DC-10

This deals with the election and with my experiences with people over the past 4 years. It is meant to imply and hint and feel spirited and happy, like cheerleaders leading the crowd at a football game.

I suppose I could explicate this a little more.
First, it could be a cheer for a high school game, and just leave it like that.
Second, we could see it as:
(1) the "Mama" in the first stanza is Life... or Mother Earth... or Gaia... or the Blessed Mother... or any nurturing (fixin' eggs, etc.) thing.Mess with her at your own peril;
(2) stanza two is introduced by a Latino and someone disrespects him and his kin. Mr. Obama's juggernaut comes in and those who thought they could disrespect must look at their own misery;
(3) I see the Aunt as Mrs. Obama, mainly because she is naturally beautiful without artifice ("hairpiece"). I was forced to endure friends who sang the praises of the miniscule Nancy Reagan while making fun of the more athletic Mrs. Obama;
We mix in prophecy and polls because.... well, why not? It ain't an essay! "LaVern" refers to LaVern Baker with whom I fell in love in 1956.

Poetry is like that: everything blends into everything else.
We do not write poetry like we do an essay: essays go on to the end of the page, then go down a line. Poetry tries to engage the emotions and body as well as the understanding, so we have to separate things to embody the feeling, the rhyme, the tempo, the beat, the meaning, and even things like voice modulations and body movements; certainly this poem recited as basketball game cheers should have movements.

Fast Day 283 November 3 2012 {Ode to Hermes/Mercury}

Hermes

Ode to Hermes/Mercury

Once, deuce,
repeat and three-peat;
Hermes high I.Q.,
Mercury quick-good
at tough ciphering:
counter, toller, dancer
to the rhythm of the maths
of the celestial spheres!
Gossiper and snitch of holy
secrets and home-boy
to us all!

Small I, frail -
no great understanding:
more a hunger and thirst,
feeling a tumescence
for smarts and wisdom
at the posterns of reason
of my SATs.
Give me the word,
the thunderbird
of brainiac faust!
gimme!

--
My ode to Hermes/Mercury, three times great (three-peat), for cool and easy wits and understanding... to be smart without a sweat.