Fast Day 300 March 2 2013 { Beautiful Sparks of God }

Vesuvius Erupting Soon After The Landings At Salerno, March, 1944

Beautiful Sparks of God

funeral home collage of history,
unsure whether we be bound or free;
ruins, fossils,
fire-drinkers of the dew:
Vesuvius erupts
and world war, too.

I go through the tomes for what I may see,
and find the works of the old Livy;
beauty ejecta
a baleful rain yields!
not in Elysium
but Phelgræean fields!

photos and videos, like leaves on a tree,
bold brushstrokes of vanish’t conspiracy;
buried in ash
the soot of noon-day,
pyroclastic x-flow
in the streets of Pompeii !

---
notes

I have found the usual ways of talking about the separation from a loved one are awfully opaque and trivial to express what I feel. I am still trying to express it.
My father was at Salerno. Soon after, the volcano Vesuvius erupted.

Beautiful sparks of God   -   "Freude,  schoener Gotterfunken" from Ode to Joy
world war, too  -   world war II
Livy  -    Titus Livius observed the eruption of Vesuvius which buried Pompeii
ejecta    -    things ejected and thrown by the eruption...   I seem to remember Livy was sitting on a boat in the bay watching the spectacle, and probably dodging ejecta.
Phelgræean    -    sulphurous fields, the opposite of Elysium
x-flow   -     extreme flow

we are buried in our remembrances: photos, videos, souvenirs. The soot of noon-day is darkness at noon.
There is an end and the promise of an archaeological beginning in the future.

Fast Day 294 January 20 2013 {Alone On Navy Street}

A Street Almost Lonely

Alone On Navy Street

All alone on Navy Street
all men walk to their ships,
birds take flight and they do not hear them,
the morning star remains unseen;
they cross the line of no-return.

Permission to come aboard!
officer of the deck:
Yeoman, take this man to the Captain.
he remembers vividly and sudden
Halo wars of tenuous youth!

He wields gravity hammer,
blasts the plasma cannon;
and laughs to rout the enemy!
watching all lines of their approach,
strums the warlike guitar’s neck.

Thirty-six hour furlough
ashore in New York City;
leaving his dying father alone
to maintain the convoy
like the sea’s Good Shepherd.
--

Going home for 36 hours from the house where my father dies. He was in the Navy.

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 244 February 4 2012 {To A Spouse Serving In Afghanistan}

To A Spouse Serving In Afghanistan

Boot buckles in the mud room,

unfastened on the floor;

scarves and mittens on the bench,

and coats hung on the door;

and all our togetherness,

like movie tickets in a drawer…

How long do you vacuum until Christmas glitter’s gone away?

The store-bought sparkling snow you spread on Santa’s sleigh?

How long after Christmas will you find needles on the floor?

How long will we be apart, how long will last the war?

Spray snow on the window pane,

a star beneath the chair;

a stash of ancient fruit cake

we did not think to share;

forgotten Christmas CDs,

unheard like my prayer…

How long do you vacuum until Christmas glitter’s gone away?

The store-bought sparkling snow you spread on Santa’s sleigh?

How long after Christmas will you find needles on the floor?

How long will we be apart, how long will last the war?

--

notes

Late getting this one up, as I am.... well, I was going to say I was busy, but perhaps I am pre-occupied with my happiness.
I was cleaning a few days ago, and the elusive remnants of the holidays made this pop into my head...

Fast Day 235 December 4 2011 {Vietnam And Other Wars}

Buddhist Monk Self-Immolation, Vietnam 1963

Vietnam And Other Wars

binge drinking is a multi-task

and is done by appointment:

on Saturday we party;

poisoned by too much booze,

overcome by a dark corner,

we followed a bouncing ping-pong

ball over the balcony

of the Amityville dormitory

or was it in Iraq

that a plate went through my head

and split my hemis into

double rockers,

and now I’m just a flathead grunt…

my hero was Connie Kalitta

from sulphurous Mount Clemens

but now I can’t even drive.

maybe opium from old Bactria

where we fight our war for

datura botany near Kandahar;

old men and children in the fields

ready to be harvested by

the fire of imprecise drones,

and wedding parties gone

to precocious funerals!

I came home and fell down

upon the beach and lay there

amidst unseen blood

from my hundred-eyed

Argus of wounds…

as transparent as an astragal

of hammered iron panels on

the plaguey windows of your houses!

--

I never wrote about Vietnam before today.

I don't think I'll explain anything.

Fast Day 201 April 9 2011 {Beau Ahmad}

Beau Ahmad

What do you see and what the news from here and o'er the sea?
What is said in Paris, what said in Brussels, and done in Benghazi?

Sand dunes of cars and pickup trucks
wadis of oil and money,
wadis of fire and death,
the brave rebels stand by the sea:
Ma Ahsanuhum!
How beautiful they are!
And beau Ahmad, a skilled welder!

Drivers, refiners, mechanics:
Beau Ahmad captains them
along the metalled roads,
eating macadam kilometers;
bound for Sirte, the vipers’ nest
to overwhelm the Jinn
and stubborn men:
mercenaries of Gaddafi.

what do you see and what the news from here and o'er the sea?
what is said in Paris, what said in Brussels, and done in Benghazi?

Libya’s new army drives on;
rebels like locusts,
thick as the newly raised
upon that fateful Day to come!
Chase the dogs back to Tripoli’s
kennel, where their leader
grooms himself by Sidra
licking his wounds in solitude.

The mirage of midday flattens
down the fortress
of our schemes and hopes;
Lacking fuel, we move like camels
wounded in the hoof; noon… we pray
to God, the Clement;
fire rains from the sky
over the head of Ahmad, beau.

what do you see and what the news from here and o'er the sea?
what is said in Paris, what said in Brussels, and done in Benghazi?


---notes
why “beau”?
in the future, there will be epics celebrating the heroes of today, and they will be depicted as handsome and brave, and the villains will be craven and base. I’m just speeding it up. And “beau” is French because the future will be an amalgam of the past.

Ma Ahsanuhum means “how handsome (or perfect or well-formed or nice) they are”

There are various place name in Libya; Sidra is the Gulf off Tripoli.

Jinn are what we call genies. They are constituted from smokeless flame and are just below the angels.

The fateful Day to come is the day of resurrection.

Fast Day 200 April 2 2011 {When NATO First in Libya Struck}

When NATO First in Libya Struck

When NATO first in Libya struck,
I felt my soul’s exuberance -
saw the Colonel’s intransigence!
The rebels in their pickup truck
watching oil flames rise to the sky,
the world drank champagne in Dubai!

The price of gasoline will rise
and so will price of wheat and bread;
news flash mixed with video games,
while Bouazizi greets the flames,
with Fatimid speed now widely spread
before the Almoravid eyes!

Now history no longer shocks,
seen from the world’s tallest building:
a mere tempest in an X-Box!
Immune in Andalusia,
await Isabella’s wedding!
Street vendor, martyr, gloria!

Does anyone recall the day
when the Khaleef Omar would spend -
full half the world beneath his sway! –
with needle, thread, his own shirts mend?
beyond the pyre of dogma’s fires
the sun sets not, but now expires!

What shall we do upon that day
when we find out, to our dismay,
that furrows dug no longer fruit,
and weapons aimed no longer shoot?
how that extinction will we tend
if God’s blessing no longer wend?

----------

notes:

My consternation watching violence. Everything is on cable TV and seems unreal from my perspective of my youth.

The Rhyme constantly changes.

Bouazizi – Muhammad Bouazizi, the street vendor in Tunisia whose self-immolation started the Middle East uprisings.

Fatimid – a dynasty originally in Egypt and an offspring established the dynasty in Spain. The speed is the speed of a blessing or good luck, because the Fatimids in Spain endured and those in Egypt did not.

Almoravid - a old North African dynasty.

Andalusia - the final Muslim kingdom in Spain at the late 15th century.

Isabella’s wedding – to Ferdinand. She was Columbus patron. The royal couple defeated the last Muslim kingdom in Spain and also expelled the Jews from Spain.

khaleef - standing for “khaleefa”, which means “successor”. Usually spelled “caliph”. ‘Umar or Omar was a khaleefa of strict probity and displayed no ostentation nor love of money or power. He also mended his own garments.

world’s tallest building – Burj Khaleefa in Dubai. Tower of Babylon type thing. Dubai is used as an emblem of pointless and soulless wealth.

wend – “expected”; past participle of “ween”, to expect. Used by Chaucer and now considered archaic.

Fast Day 163 July 16 2010 {Algebra y Fuego}

US Civil War Wounded

Álgebra y Fuego

When I say I love you,
do you trust me?
When I say I care,
will I be true?
If I come back from far away
do you greet me,
Johnny and his gun come home
to join the prosthetic few?

Will you drive me daily
to my re-hab?
Will you buy me beer,
...  push my wheelchair?
Will you explain the fearful
algebra and fire
that guide our fatal honor
into grief, into despair?

Will I smoke the opium
of Afghanistan?
Or from Ciudad Juarez
will I do cocaine?
Wake up screaming from withdrawal -
or from nightmares;
my mind is nitrous oxide
a seep of jet methane!

When you say you still care,
will you be true?
When you say you love me,
may it inspire?
The algebra of the past
defines fidelity
and honor, but we blacken
like candy in the fire.

Spanish Civil War Poster

-
notes:
Johnny and his gun = Johnny Got His Gun  by Dalton Trumbo. That's about it.

Fast Day 123 October 9 2009 {My Own Private Falluja}

My Own Private Falluja

Cleave the Sea with a sword!
or pierce the Mountain's black basalt heart
with a lance that's stoutly thrown!
Spit and douse the fiery Sun
and light the passion of the eunuch Moon!-
with tender lies uniquely told!
The lies of love, unnumbered,
rise from my body's parts like steam and fog! -
burning like Falluja furnace! -
Like a cigarette whose smoke
I gulp down like Ramadan-starved men
who break the fast
with food...
with drink...
with sweets and more.

Bodily forms from afar!
I sense the Boundaries of my affection! -
their circumference I invite.
Yet my eyes are empty;
your face has set into the West, and has
not yet arisen in the East!
Scatter the treasures of
Byzantium with phosphorous white delight!
Count the gold as sand! -
without value...
without hope...
without your jewelled arm!

note
written with more passion than clarity.
it is filled with desire and anxiety.
any meaning expressable in words escapes me.

Fast Day 77 November 21 2008 {Ramaad}

Ramaad

charcoal, ashes,
resurrect the glory of
any bright ringed bird!
The most wonderful adornment
is the gold and silver
chased upon my sword!...
and the oceanic inlet
between your breasts!
the tidal basin where life
was create by God alone!
no artifex needed, no engineer...
He sired the Universe!
the universe now
charcoal, ashses,

Fast Day 60 July 25 2008 {When We Bombed Baghdad}

When we bombed Baghdad
I watched transfixed on the pixel'd
cross, and wept and laughed
for joy at smart bombs.
When we sanctioned the shit
out of them, I shook my head,
amazed at their obstinacy!
When we invaded again,
I watched and goose stepped
in my heart out of sheer loving
admiration for all such missions
yet unaccomplished in this world!
And like innocence children,
we smile and sing:

niemoller, niemoller,
let Hitler come over!
niemals, und niemals,
let's hear from Goebbels!
niemand, je niemand,
hab'ich kein verstand!

Fast Day 10 August 11, 2007 {The Geometry of Desire}

Until there is peace in Iraq...
I think I shall be writing rather a long time.

Please keep in mind that I do not have a surplus of poetry in a vault somewhere, so I have to do these poems on the fly each week. Hence their rather unfinished and junior high school character.



The Geometry of Desire

if I took weeds
and planted them in rows
interspersed by borders
of a lowly shrub
and placed large ribbons
of a prairie grass to blow
in secants of gold
you would say
oh, what a beautiful garden!

if I took men
and women homeless
and gave them food
and shelt’ring walls
three meals a day
and a key to
a mahogany library
you would say
oh, what wisdom there is!

if I took the drawings
of children from war zones
and littered them with
the mothers’ tears
and matted them in frames
of the understanding,
and hung them in
a gallery of knowing silence,
you would say
god, what have we done!

Fast Day 9 August 4, 2007 {Homeless in the Market of War}

Fast one day a week until this War - an outrage to God and mankind- ends justly.


Homeless in the Market of War

This is an age when no man goes about in finery.// This is the age of our debasement.
When our hearts are noble, even the rags of the poor//shine like silken finery upon our backs.
Five years ago the powerful usurped their own //worst dreams and became ignoble beasts of prey.
Richard Cheney, William Krostol, Richard Perle and // Douglas Feithe, Michael Ignatieff and Strauss
sneered at us in our drab clothes and straggling band//saying how will you endure? there are so few of you!
And we answered, Lo, indeed you are fools! // for the number of noble men is truly small!
Not like your band of discord and war, motley garbed// in opinions outrageous and ravening.
The noble have a fortress mighty whose //strength gives increase to our small band of heroes.
It is a disgrace to lie. They ignobly spread lies like seeds.// Would we not rather die than live their fabrications?
We mill about in the midst of the market, looking//at the wares. To which seller of souls shall we entrust our lives?

Fast Day 8 July 27 2007 {Poem for Fast Day 8}

The War continues.

Saw the movie "Gandhi" again.
God must have an odd sense of humor. He says "Every time I send a good person to you humans, you kill 'em! What's with you people? I mean, I even sent my own son...and you CRUCIFIED him!"
God shakes His head in disbelief.








Poem for Fast Day 8
When the City came to destroy the vegetation along Adams Road.

every growing stick has a face
wild flowers grow…like wild, you know.
diverse populations…
they piss some people off. I forest walk...
the legs of my pants smell like mallow
and stem juice white.

men come to spread death’s carpet.
wet lands with cats tails eight feet tall…
looking down on our heads…
they beat them down. broken.
my shoes are muddy and smell like herbicide;
I hear raccoon breath at 3 a.m.

If I care, I feel so sad; so why care?
why should I care…or connect.
a gas powered weed whacker comes,
mighty roar of fossil fuel. We run.
my shirt fruity with sweat
and hot memories of Adonis.

who cries for Adonis? am I his keeper?
there are weed control laws.
you are a weed, too, if you piss us
off! Free...you forget your clothes…
you walk nakedly trees…
the forest remembers you!

Fast Day 5 July 6, 2007 {Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo}

I am looking forward to another fast day.
I cannot wait until the first chance to turn up my nose at a platter filled with french fries...or some other equally nauseating carbo deep fried in grease.

We had a large thunderstorm with hail as big as...not grapefruit, blueberries.
The acequias of my garden ( water channels) are undoubtedly breached and will require labor in the hot sun.
I shall take shovel in hand and repair, carry water if needed, and the only canal left empty will be the alimentary.

I read a poem about Guantanamo yesterday. I did not take a fancy to it, so I wrote my own:


Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo


Behind the garage there is a garden,
in the wastelands. The builders
stole the soil; they sold it
to pay the landscapers crew!

Water channels dug into sand and stone,
through broken concrete and asphalt,
recycled crap from everywhere.
Experiment to see what will grow…

builders just throw trees into holes,
toss flowers into trenches…
no mindfulness, no husbandry
no botany, no lasting beauty…

trees…symbols on an architect’s sketch:
seen from above
pointillistic circles with bent branches
twisting around a circle
like swastikas deformed.

But something grows in this waste land!
A tree surrogate with leaves like elephant ears
of a wide florescent green on a stem
thinly veined in burgundy kermes;

a desert spike with compounded eyes
of saffron lids bepetalled;
walking sticks with purple crowns,
mille foil clouds, creeping parasols,
great pendant hearts, explosions of the briar,

Hemlocks where we hang our hearts;
covert agents of desire,
spies of reproduction,
texting with chromo-semaphores.

The fairies pippin, Mab’s nonpareil,
spanish pearmain, grizzly muscadine,
early Margaret and scarlet crofton;
all fruits of rich imagination!

In the midst of this, on the verge
of a small isle in the streams,
stands a vulgar hyssop unseen
among the vibrant pageantry.

United around its upper course
juvenile aphids clutch and huddle
in prison suits of blood-orange:
silently there and nowhere else…
and wait for the time of their fulfillment.

A denumerable crowd sits as if
in dreaming prayer, bidden to the masjid
of stinging nettle and menthol,
alone and stripped of their imam
whose sermon they cannot ken.

I watch in fatal fascination
this epithalamion symbiotic,
not knowing if we rise
as ladybirds to dry our wings…
or swarm to our demise.

June 15, 2007 Second Week: {The Party Store Of Peace}

Faest or Faesten sound a lot like Feast or Fest(ival).
Appearances are deceiving.

Fasting is rather gruesome.
I allow myself tea and - in the afternoon- one or two cans of soda pop. My brain really needs the glucose by then.

Second Week Poem

The Party Store Of Peace

They were tearing up the roadway
by the party store of peace.
(no esta bodega…cerevisa no se vende aqui)
The sidewalk had been swallowed up
and there was no place to park,
so we drove around the corner,
by the flood plain,
it hadn’t rained for a while and
global warming gives us places to park.
So we got a meter with time on it,
near the killer colored tiles from
a mural made in oaxaca-
broken into pieces and half buried
that had lain next to the electrical transformer
ever since the city threw it out…
every year some kid stumbles onto it
for the first time…
and wonders what the hell!
and wonders what the oaxaca?
and then forgets.
I’d forget all this, too,
if it wasn’t tethered like Paris Hilton.

We walk by a ladies’ store
a fossil found in stone,
with clothes in showy windows
as you funnel to the door.
Inside the Andrews Sisters sing on the PA.
Finally we arrive at the party store of peace:
(no esta bodega…cerevisa no se vende aqui)
the a/c is on the fritz,
the peace owner is wearing an orangey plaid shirt
with striped shorts and hot pink alligator shoes-
his white hair as long as that
of a guy that makes candles and soaps
for the farmers’ market-
somewhere a woman screamed.
the supplier in Carolina had a new batch of ink;
the crescent moon silver is now
a battleship grey…I mean, don’t you think you’d
let us know?
2,000 cards! she will call! we will hear about this!
and mrs. ormond’s order wuz never even shipped!
called Virginia myself…liar!
fedex got zippo from zip code there to zip code here!
bupkis! kis my bup!
So I said, yeah, my suppliers used to change quality
and leave it for us to find out…
it is so damn hot!
May I get a peace card?
all out.
When…? Next week for the fast?
dunno. haven’t paid the peace bill…
It was so hot; we went
to drown our thirst
in the ABM Sports Bar
next to WMD Books.
Drinks were on me
and I paid with what little was left
from my peace dividend.

News From The War Fast Day 1 {Dream Girl Weaving}

Dream girl weaving, dream boy running
these are the residue of life.
On both sides of the street
there were doors of iron
but the hinges were of straw.
The reeds along the river
shu-shu in the voice of ghosts.
I saw a ghost once,
I thought it was my sister's daughter,
little Maha, her only child.
But she snarled like a dog
when I came by
and she vanished...
I heard a splash and ran to the river.
But there was only a widening ripple,
widening into a tsunami of regret...
I cannot eat the food and chocolate
I had set out for myself.


First fast day.

I believe the number of US troops killed surpassed 3,500.
The number of Iraqis killed are uncountable.
This is our doing. I trust it will be worth it.