Day 397 October 17 2015 Venetian Blinds

Venetian Blinds

If the eyes be the window to the soul,
then Venetian blinds my emotions,
blurring another Earth outside,
mandolin of light

When I open them white prisoner bars,
they clatter like the bones of saint death,
I jump - they list - like sinking ships,
Lusitania light

Hate cleaning all them individ'l slats,
dust and nicotine... remember man
yer made from dust and nicotine,
O, let there be light!

My tattoos are stained and polished tendons
like blinds with an equalizer cord,
tasselled with gold, yet indifferent
to my needs for light.


--

Day 396 October 10 2015 Reading The News

Reading The News

Piles of cinders and ash!
burning laptop cauldron;
pouring forth bitumen and sulphurous fumes
like vehemence upon a desolate shore!

Vomit of drones and bombs!
burning seas off Aden;
Beirut and Paris swept into Etna's maw -
like pyroclastic clouds of evening news!

Day 395 October 3 2015 Disposable Smokes (Cigares Jetables)

Disposable Smokes

Les cigares jetables de 400 souffles...
myriad de bars a cigare,
couleurs illimitées,
sumptueux, verts, grises, rouges,
etc.
pour que vous choisissiez...

Choisissez s'il vous plaît;
O, que vous choisissiez!
avant la fin du monde,
avant fin de la vie,
etc.
la prière d'enfer est tou'c'qui reste...

Day 394 September 26 2015 Derecho Rain

Derecho Rain

This is the year the neighbor's tree came down;
the wind and rain was like derecho
a sinister derecho
like I never seen before...
and then a crash!
like Kapellmeister Bach slamming fast down
upon his primeval Himmelsburg
frightening his twelve obbligato woodwinds!
 
So I called my neighbor 
and he did not know me,
and asked if I wished to clean it up
and I said I did not have a chain saw anywheres
near that big, I mean, by Santa Muerte
and Lord Death...
I have not the mortal mean Scythe
to cut, to chop!
To thin out the surplus population!

We've closed up for the winter
and the fence rails where it fell
and still broke and splintered,
but I imagine I can still see the full foliage
of its first fall! when the leaves
filled our back yard full fifty
feet from its trunk!

And even now my vision is obscured by
that fallen crown of leaves,
just as I still see the long gone rock garden
and the wisteria alley with its swings,
and outhouses pushed over on Halloween!
I see through cataracts of the past.

--

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 392 September 12 2015 Noon

Noon


The gardens have no tears left to water them;
the mowing madness of gasoline
engine-hordes have run through the ecumene...

All solar schizophrenia lay out
around the thunder-struck Jerusalem
bush, red now in this leech time of autumn.

The grass is dead like selfie-bleeding
celebrities awaiting the compost
cenotaph of  fame.

--

Day 391 September 5 2015 Matins

Matins


Matins are mid-morning.
I throw prayers at gods like piles
and bundles of laundry heaped
in dusty unused corners of my room.

I sweep the blessings
indifferent from the dust and dirt
that layer dark my floors
but scatter diamonds of light while falling.

--

Day 390 August 30 2015 Dawn

Dawn

Dawn is a yawning rose,
dripping scarlet liquor,
thrown at my naked thigh
by the lusty nymph of morning;
I use it later as a paint brush
to paint the gardens of life
and blur the borders
that limit my skin.

Day 389 August 23 2015 Aylan

Aylan 

Indifference is the ghost beneath my bed,
the bush where tinsel ghosts congregate,
trolls that wish to party and dismember me,
to scatter the pieces of my body
around the Mediterranean -
(Venice of the soul, as we sink into a sea;
great Doges of our madness!) – 
like the alabaster torso of Osiris
washed up from Syria and Beirut,
drowned upon the shore,
where we Instagram
and soon forget
th’indifference what drove us mad.


 --
written 09/03/2015 on hearing of the death of Aylan Kurdi of Syria.

Day 388 August 16 2015 Soon To Be Grandmother

Soon To Be Grandmother 

 Fiery and treasured stone of the wide world,
deep earth stone and fire;
Sun of dawning iridescent stone:
Vesuvius of flowing love, like cooling lava,
wrapt in smoke and lurid glow,
which gives to our unheedful Pompeii souls
the blatant mortal bodies, so easy on the eyes;
Mother, lovers, father, daughter, and mother again.

Thus the way is uncovered
to the Villa of the Mysteries,
and Demeter wanders no more;
she comes home to Eleusis,
finding her way by the geography of baby clothes.

--

Day 387 August 9 2015 Old Age

Old Age

Muses of old age cough...
idyllic pleasures culminate,
into idle agrimonies for pain:
will-o-the-whisp dreams,
hawthorn days,
finger-apple cancer,
chafeweed elbows and joints,
so take sprigs of rosemary
to the closets and the library
to avert the moths of time...

in shivering frost and a coldness that cloys
like sugar on tooth decay...
no hearth

--

Day 386 August 2 2015 Cottages

Cottages


I had a cottage I stained green
to match the under foliage
of the pear trees all around.

I had a house I stained smoke
to match the banshee scream of clouds
of the approaching storm front.

I had a house that I limed white
to invoke the lofty cumuli
tumbling from Lake Huron.

--

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.

--

Day 384 July 19 2015 Rain

Rain

The clouds condense and observe us close,
the flies fall down to the water's surface,
and the smoke of freighters trails along their wake.
The fishermen are beaten pilgrims, brass...
their feet cymbal shod
and fulgur lightning!

The ozone fragrance of the storm front comes,
vast alkali cleansing of the tongues;
now veils of rain obscure the sun bright pudenda!
Oppressed  by plaguey gnats and flies,
like Egyptians who refuse
to let the fishes go.

--

Day 383 July 12 2015 The Fish Speak

Born of several sires and estuaries,
spontaneous fame, we jump by art untaught
yet davening in the reeds,
studious taliban of the tides!

Old Walter sits buddha-like in the bay,
a Bamiyan of stern brow threatening looks,
as we little fish flee,
doing good acts heedlessly!

The land fattens off the screen of reeds,
which themselves browse the cooling flood of the bay;
fishermen, although we are not friends...
a world is good which hold thee!

--

Writing 382 July 5 2015 Fishing

As far as I can count, there should be 381 poems before this, even though I left a couple of gaps, thinking I would fill in. There would be too much filling in, so I will just pick up where I left off.

I let things lapse because just over a year ago we started getting my mother's place ready to sell, selling it, and then moving her closer to where the rest of the family is. In October, my little brother died suddenly, and in January this year, my wife's sister died.

I think stress, quiet and subliminal, wiped out any inspirations.

I used to title the writing "fast day no. such-and-such",  but that strikes me as too pretentious by half.

This is a birthday poem, and it is very rough and hardly ready, but I am a rough poet, not a finish poet.

--

At zero-seven hundred we got underway
heading for the Blue Rushes, at which wat'ry meadow
bulrush spread we cut back the motor, almost stopped.
My grandfather was in the stern and steering
the movement of the boat by the trolling motor;
Water and epistalsis back and forth, up, down...
I feel asleep and dreamed we had returned home,
mooring at the dock, whose bleached planks
were my fathers' bones...
and cleaned the catch by the garden,
where peonies were their eyes...
and posed for polaroids
by the old resurrected cherry tree.

 --

Fast Day 376 August 30 2014 Into The Wild

Into The Wild

grape juice and dates
feasts of fats and sugar
cockaigne holidays!
wines and marrow bones!

shun the wilderness!
scarcity, hunger, thirst -
eating roots and berries
McCandless dies, revives!

filling and empty
are our magnetic poles,
wand'ring like prodigalls
until our heaven's rest!


--
I finished this 01/29/2015, so I put it up last, and will move it chronologically later.

Fast Day 379 September 20 2014 Hwore Of Cancer

Hworeof Cancer

The Hwore of Cancer came against the hospital
and spread her lofty legs above it all -
batshit all Akkadian crazy! -
from info desk to the parking garage,
like a syphilitic Rhodian colossus;
steaming in the winter’s cold air,
tinted and varnished giantesse
 bids us enter into Avernus.
A mighty apostassy
the heressy of our time.

Is not the cable tv glow a atheisstical plot
to foil and mimic the light of God?
And are not the blond ladies who read the news
honoring Semiramis or Cybele…
the mother of the Babylonian messiah?
the devil is in
the lymph-nodes,
the flesh, the world…
and doctors fail their Turing test
and they scatter to avoid the family eyes -
big eyes, sad eyes,
greedy for more pagan gifts of Life!




--
0i/29/2015

Fast Day 394 January 3 2015 Veille Du Nouvel An

Veille du Nouvel An
 
ouvrir mes bras la nuit dernière,
sang mouillé, anonyme;
nous buvons ,
nous hurlons
à la lune et aux étoiles -
et coups de feu partout.
bienvenue à mon intérieur !


 --
open my arms last night,  
blood wet, anonymous;  
we drink,
we howl
at the moon and stars -
gun shots everywhere.
welcome to my inside!

Fast Day 393 December 27 2014 Wint'ry Cathedral

Wint'ry Cathedral

Far away houses hidden under the trees,
which form gothic vaults of choir, apse, and nave
above them, and which support the snow facade;
wint'ry cathedral !


--

Fast Day 375 August 23 2014 Lonely Roads

 Lonely Roads

sadness falls like confetti; obscures the road:
where we wept so much; there's hardly a tear now:
I have grown weary; overcome with life:
a smell! taste! O, smile!


--

note
sapphics writ 11/11/11/5 syllables with a break in each line between clauses.

Fast Day 374 August 16 2014 Christmas Flood

Christmas Flood

The front door is a gentle rain to its friends,
readily fills the dining room reserve,
while busy cooks swell aromatic rivers;
mill dams of desires!

 --

Fast Day 373 August 9 2014 Lilies

Lilies

When lilies of the field are pressed between the good book's pages, in sweet Lord Jesus' raiment dressed, their seeds endure for ages!
refrain   God's seed endures forever, blown on the wind of grace; it will always bloom again and grow to His embrace.

The wheat upon the open plain, stretch forth their heads to pray; costume themselves in diamond rain, and their winnow fan array.  
refrain God's seed endures forever, blown on the wind of grace; it will always bloom again and grow to His embrace.

 Currents of the His saving waters, sweep in the ebb and flow; they bring a saving grace to me, and to the flowers to grow.    
refrain God's seed endures forever, blown on the wind of grace; it will always bloom again and grow to His embrace.

See me at the harvest,
see me at the bee;
lay me up in in bundled straw,
yearning to be free!
And when the harvest's over,
and no more stalks to scythe,
buy some time with lemonade,
and we shall be alive!

--
notes

From my other blog.

This was written in tribute to Fanny Crosby. Her hymns are much better than this crude attempt, but she was a better religious person than me, too. The form is odd; at the end it jumps into a new meter...everything. I thought it a fault, but it is a metaphor for the time when everything will change.

At the end "buy some time with lemonade..." may seem incongruous, to you as well to me, but it just was a picture of those who had passed were sheaves of wheat, cut down and laid up, in a barn or in the fields, where they wait - in barns where the late afternoon sun experiments with cracks and breaks in the carbolineum wall boards, and lights the dusty interior -

and the harvesters take a lemonade break...

and by the time they wipe their lips dry, we shall have been re-born.

Obviously, I require a songwriter to go with these lyrics.
 --

Fast Day 372 August 2 2014 Citizens United

Citizens United


Modern day Terminator!
 Hawking fears A.I.
The Imperial Memorial of 1958 -
when Sarah Connor was born -
spoke of the need for virtue confronted
by non-humans riding motorcycles...
and nude-crashing into biker bars!
and the right to voice your opinion
in a letter with a 3 cent stamp!
Ha!
 3 cents ignores the human costs involved;
Ha!
the corporate voice:
a CONELRAD siren;
pierces the silent holy night,
and grabs and pulls at
Christina's human legs!
desperate for home!

--

FastDay 371 July 26 2014 Fishtown

Leland, Michigan

Fishtown

A cosmic perspective I have none:
through a Beatrix Potter countryside
I drove north to Leland
in the Leelanau
for the July wide five K run.

To Heaven's pawn shops do I go,
to find duplicates of the textile arts;
and wander in antique stores
in the old Fishtown
for embroidered hearts I can not sew.

Lake Michigan has a trillion eyes
and reflects each star a million-fold;
flying images of fire lanterns,
burning like desire!
a new persona bold I'll try on for size!

--

note
finally picking up the pace again after selling mother's house and moving her and my brother's funeral.

so, the rhyme is

a,b,c,a  [L2:b ---> L5:x]

which means the final syllable, b, of the second line shows up somewhere (x = unknown) in the middle of the last line, also.
It's just a toy to play with.