Fast Day 312 May 25 2013 {Memorial Day 2013}

Black-eyed Susans or Rudbeckia

Memorial Days 2013

Let me lay beneath a tree in May,
and read a book of knowledge-charms,
runes of an age when arms
entwined in love and did not slay.

Let me sleep within an alchemy,
and dream a dream of harmless days
and nights of love amaze,
far from a violent blasphemy.

Alembic days and nights' crucible,
mixed together and enswirled,
earth of the common world:
flee the mundane irreducible!

Wild flowers prodigality!
Mr. Rudbeck’s asters!
Black-eyed Susans in the pastures
with tiger originality!

--
notes

I put this up, then I reworked it, making the second and third lines rhyme, because I had already done so in the first stanza, although I was not aware of it.

This marks 6 years, and I am glad I stuck with it. There have been some fine phrases as well as some ghastly, plodding bleats.

tiger  =   with tints of orange 

--

Fast Day 234 November 24 2011 {Procne Is Among The Slaves}

Procne Is Among The Slaves
Dedicated to the US Congress
November 23, 2011


there was construction on Mack Avenue
so I got out of the car and walk for a mile
walk for a mile

in my high heels
my crane-like high heels

in my black, black high heels

(chorus: her black, black high heels)

bike guy on my left
food truck on my right
I got out of the car
walk for a mile
in my running shoes,
black Converse running shoes

(chorus: her black Converse running shoes)

Eastern Market Thanksgiving turkey
no hormone nonsense for my babies...
I took the turkey home,
and gave it to my Sis;
get new gilded shoes on
and going to go to Greektown

(chorus: People Mover Greektown)

Greektown casino takes my money,
and tries to take gold lamé virgin;
blue-heron-like
heels, and my life
to sit like Procne
among the slaves.

(chorus: Procne among the slaves)

I will shoe my feet in rain clouds,
I shall clothe myself in line;
like a phoenix.
we shall rise and fly
away, swallows and
nightingales...


scorn the ruling tyrant owls-
carrion eaters of the night;
we leave them behind,
we high-legged herons!

--
notes

Procne and Philomena were sisters and both became married to Tereus, king of Daulis, who symbolizes government.
He was depraved and eventually caused both sisters in their turns great grief. They escaped from his depraved tyranny and were turned into a swallow and a nightingale, while he was turned into an owl, or some stories say a hoopoe bird.
There are many variations on this story.

So was that tyrant Tereus' nasty lust

Changed into Upupa's foul-feeding dust

Lord Brooke; Declination of Monarchie.                   ( Upupa = hoopoe )

Hoopoe Bird

The poem is a symbolic story of the oppression of the poor and the powerless by bad government and its  supporters. It tells how the people will become free from their chains and fly away to freedom. It is about women and poverty.

line    =   linen

--