Fast Day 139 January 29 2010 draft 1

Fezzan Oasis

The Thief of Water

I smell a flower,
a mallow stem bleeding, perhaps,
then the queen's lace,
and finally lavander and rose,
and I step into Cairo's perfume shop
of street, eros, and imagination
to think of her.

I taste water
dripping on my tongue; reading with my eyes
old hieroglyphs
that trace the course of vanished rivers
and tell the stories of the god-like lakes -
libraries of Alexandria:
scattered and gone...

I see the geese,
a group of males in the wetlands,
then wonder where
the females spend times of intimacies;
I fend into the reedy bottomland,
finding nothing but the track of drought...
then yearn for her.

I feel the virgin palm tree
bend beneath my over-eager grasp,
then wonder why
I am so angry, so perplexed...
so I go mad within the oasis
to prey, then drink nakedly from the spring
of her lips.

I see a mirage of flags
fly from imaginary forts within
the dry lake bed...
suddenly my hair whips, running gazelle,
dust clouds, spit flying,  and panting mouth...
not pennants of warlike bedouins, but
her wet dress...drying!

...I arrive at last,
out of breath and dirty as an eland -
where have you been?
she asks, eyeing my drooping fidelity;
Up and down, I gasp, up and down,
questing Afric's paleo-lakes and streams!
they are no more!

she laughs -
like sparks from the Minotaur's flinty hooves -
takes me down a notch! -
phantom symposium of thirsty eyes!
How could the eternal lakes be gone?
And sacrament streams? Or extinct
my hart and hind?

naked gazelle -
go to the window, look about, and tell
me whatso you see!
Forgetting luxuriant nudity,
I strode - all dusty, a  palm tree,  verdant
papyrus - I was numb catastrophe!
I saw the lakes! ... and then sat down, bare skin
on alabaster.

Her rain was love;
we replenished entire aquifers!
from my dust came clay
mixed with eros' sev'ral peculiar sweats;
Will one tumble th'Atlantean towers?
Or intercept and bind our Mother Nile?
...illusion!


------------------
notes:

Minotaur
the offspring of Minos' Queen Pasiphae and a Bull. Anyway...Minotaur is half human, half bull, lived in the Labyrinth, and Theseus killed him/it.
Daedalus designed the Labyrinth, if you're interested; his son Icarus was the first to die in a flying accident.

Afric's paleo-lakes...
anciently the Sahara was a verdant area, having dried up recently in geological time, destined to be green again in 15,000 years. "paleo" is a Greek prefix for "old".

phantom symposium
she says I have seen illusions, caused by thirst...phantom drinking parties ( in this case, drinking water) caused by thirsty eyes.

Some say that within the paleo-system of lakes and rivers, from the Chott el Jerid in Tunisia - in the North- down to the mega-lake of Chad...and even beyond, when the drainage of the Mighty Congo went eastwards, to the Rift Lakes of Victoria and Tanganyika...there was situated the city of Atlantis...and its destruction came with the Great Drying and plate tectonics within the Rift Valley.

The lady of this poem and I live in the magic time to come - or the time past, when the Sahara is green, and mankind is at peace. We interrelate with the present, and she cannot believe the drought that has overtaken her land in the past, which is our present.

stanza 1:  I sense a wondeful scent
stanza 2:  the waters of Africa are drying, and are ancient as hieroglyphs...gone like Alexandria's library
stanza 3:  animals are disappearing...yet I remember Her.
stanza 4:  within an oasis, my passion bursts out...
stanza 5:  a mirage of flags reminds me of Her, and I run, for the flag is her dress drying in the wind.
stanza 6:  I arrive and She asks me where I'd been...
stanza 7:  She tells me the disappearance of the waters is the mirage
stanza 8:  She tells me to look out the window and see for myself...
stanza 9:  Rain Storm!

Welcome To Another Friend

I had this photo in my other blog showing the entrance to the "Mixing Bowl" of the interstates heading to the City. I realize it could also be symbolic, sort of ... well, any number of things.

Welcome, Daniel, to the group of us all.

Fast Day 138 January 22 2010 {The Opium of Afghanistan}

The Opium of Afghanistan

The opium of Afghanistan
is always on my mind;
sixty patients who conceal
man's intolerance to man
who will die, and who will deal.

A strategy of hegemon
planned within the Pentagram's
cubicular endless row,
sends a gift wrapped carton
bomb where we disguise our blow.

A poster of the ocean sunset,
a poster of new born pups;
missing pieces jigsaw puzzles
newspapers with coffee wet
on tables 'neath our muzzles.

Our karaoke souls sing:
O, floating to Madagascar
on a raft of vegetation;
lithium changes everything,
in the hospital of my nation.

I believe in a higher power..!
To see my god I wish!
TV! Cable snaps to view!
One thousand channels from but a Dish!

( the cable screams...!
like the cirucmcised sons of Heth.)
circumcision...magic edit...
morphman video magic edit
crack download
true launch drivecrypt
zetamail and nitroboot
max crax
transcender device
system
key
crack
visual chairman
and the red book of
mr. skins.
the cities of the plain in Midian...
and Narcisse in Cairo's cemeteries
where white skinned children play...
with roadware techno bombs,
bullshit crack,
according to our plan
the power of the pentagram...
and the hard drive is a leather
disk-like codpiece storage unit...
...I have run out of precious words!
...chain-smoked them all! scattered at our feet...
like leaves to fill and papers to roll
and my mind a bic lighter to ignite...
the robot drones of fate draw nigh!

------
notes

meditation on the untold story of where Afghanistan's opium is going, mental hospitals, and TV.

Welcome

Welcome to a new fellow over in the friendly gallery section,  Brian Rick.
Keep in mind these poems come off the assembly line at a rate of one per week, so they can be quite unfinished and crude...OK. Crude. Not unkempt, however.

Welcome.

Fast Day 137 January 14 {Walk Like an Egyptian}

Nut, the sky goddess, and Geb, the god of the earth

from the tomb of Heru em Horeb

Walk Like an Egyptian

Like Egypt's gods of earth and heaven,
the sky sits on my face today...
while I sit on the concrete stoop out front
and buzz to the sun going
around the girdle of her hips.
like sixty!

Like the music of a pantheon,
I plunge into a mystery
where the nude girl plays acoustic guitar,
and ties me to the bed with
the smoky rings of incense from
Kashmeer.

We go in, and climb the booming,
throbbing bass of footprints worn deep:
crevasses in the glacial wooden stairs;
like kneelers from a bankrupt church;
wish I was again outside,
dreaming.

I'll fly away in the morning,
when the patchwork quilt, sewn by hand
from the liquid smells of love's acrobat
stifles me with succubal heat:
I'll fly and leave my jeans behind,
like TV.

-----
note:
I originally had an unfinished poem scheduled up by mistake; I removed it and put this in.

added 01/26/2010
someone asked that I clarify a bit of imagery: stanza 3, when "we go in", we are climbing old, old wooden stairs which have deep impressions in them left by thousands of footfalls over the years...deep as cravasses in slowly moving glaciers...glaciers which now recede and disappear.

Fast Day 136 January 6 2009 {LemonAid}

LemonAid

I saw a lemon in a store;
the saffron sadness of a lemon!
to be the end of crabbed metaphor
about eternal optimism:

when I'm given lemons, why...
I make lemonade!
same drink children sell a summer's
day for a mere 5 cents plain a glass!

first, pluck from eden citrus tree
second, close-pack to transport,
from maternal Murcia that bore thee
to a grocery's endless cabinets.

then to form a pyramid
of cheerleaders who yell - Oh,
gimme an L! gimme an E!
and sell for a cool 99 a pound!

within a glad bag of point-9 mil
are buried those old lemon skins!
sever, cut, and grind yet still
we plunder them for zest!

-------
notes

inspired by a grocer's vast pyramids of fruit, wonderful and cheery...yet I knew what would happen once we got them home.

Fast Day 135 December 29 2009 {Three Kings Travel Light}

Three Kings Travel Light


zip open the black mascara'd night
and let fall the stars
like contents of cosmetic bags
before the wond'ring eyes
of King Herod's TSA:
the luggage of the Three Kings;
gold doesn't make it
through metal detector;
dogs sniff out
frankincense & myrrh.
so Three Kings backpack
the last ten miles,
totes and duffel,
club bag and valise;
garment bag shepherds
their samsonite vigils keep...
until the angels come
with their carry-ons,
singing in their sleep!

Fast Day 134 December 25 2009 {Christmas Snow}

Christmas Snow

Shovel snow, hearty lads!
shovel, pike, and broom!

This song we do sing when the solstice yawns
and blows too much snow for man or beast...
an over-measuring of snow... for free
a cornucopia of ice!
So much that old Man North, Boreas,
a well-known Scrooge and miser,
stingy and cold to the boney zero,
is now acclaimed by all
an open-handed and generous man:
the Clement, the Giving, magnanimous!
this the song of the scrapers,
this the song of shovelers;
little boys throw snowballs

at pompous men in top hats!

And all the world's gone

topsy-turvy, upside down,

at this our Christmas time!
Come, truckers! come, pilers!

come sowers of salt!
The drifts grow high, O, fathers!
as high as grandfather Pine!

Sing ye no dirges now!
sing joyful litanies in

this harvest-time of snow!
the lamps of dawn are lit!
Sing, ho! 'tis Christmas!

-------
notes

I am not sure what to say about this poem. It is what happens when one begins to think about Christmas and snow and presents and trees when one has been reading about ancient Greece: it is sort of an antique snow shovelling, snow harvesting type of poem Hesiod ( author of Works and Days and second in fame to Homer ) would have sung as he shoveled the snows of his homestead.

Boreas is the North Wind, and instead of being a royal pain in the wedge, he is seen as sending a white Christmas and snowy gifts.

pike to push the ice with pointed staffs,

scrape to scrape ice, or to scrape snow off the surface of ice.

------

painting: C A Jeffrey http://www.cajeffrey.blogspot.com/

Fast Day 133 December 19 2009 {Detroit Hawks}

Detroit Hawks

Night light, feathery and black
as ravens' wings closed
about the City of Detroit;
the lights that burned were few
and appeared to the naked eye
flicked bics in a concert
of a band
no one could get it on with.

People walk about like code,
some in the night, some of it:
viral and uncertain natures;
spectators at a buddy's fun'ral -
not the centers of attention...
they light a match
at a grave
no one could really dig.

Coney Island diners dream
of chromo lights all bright,
kongou beads and turmeric
and the armpit smell of old
latakia tobacco burnt:
but just flip a switch
on the drum
of neon plastique percussion!

A beer and peanut universe
dumped on the barroom floor,
and never resurrected
until the Days of Cashews
and Heineken on tap:
Paradise Alley
for a buck
in mem'ry's Edgewater park.

I do the buzz and do the flop,
smoke pacifico, too.
my girlfriend is a hideous hag
eating one them coney dogs...
she's my drive-thru kiss tonite!
a bucket's gasoline -
and a match -
my devils' night's desire.

I wish we had a hurricane,
or a lovely flood;
devastating climate change
or tectonic plate head-ons;
acts begetting sympathy,
instead of scorn
and scorch'd-earth
of unkind condemnation!

Fast Day 132 December 12 2009 {Reading Dead Men's Blogs}

Reading Dead Men's Blogs

He was a hiker.
He climbed mountains...
this I see,
speaking in the tongue of Grand Canyons
with just a hint of Denali;
bathed in Sangre de Christo;
traveller

married man...

like eating dead man's curry!...

yet I cannot stop:

and floods in Karachi,
visiting Mr. Jinnah's tomb...
dissolution in Calcutta
when Mumbai was yet Bombeeee...
yet nothing changes...now;

eternal Hindu Kush.

Walter Cronkite's gone
along with peace of mind
and no one's around to answer his questions
about his cancer...
tv set of unending despair
Mesa Verde of his adopted
home country, the USA,
no Yosemite of regret.
His blog does not increase now...

fallow, unchanging fields...
he climbs the same heights...
visits the same lands...and always
he asks his electric question...

Why me, God? Why a Colorado
of desire, dammed up in that enormous lake
that sediments your blessings in endless strata
and shall I die before the flood?
- this I know - oh, God!
before the freedom flood...
Or shall I fly away?

pic: richalyn marquez

----------

notes

A blog of a trevller from India. He died, yet his blog remains.

Fast Day 131 December 4 2009 {The Winter Always Rings Twice}

The Winter Always Rings Twice

Winter comes, and darkness

rings my doorbell twice;
headlight rhinestones smash

on my windshield...
lava of rain,

magma of ice;
when the heater hasn't heated up,
we drive-by people coloured grey,
dracula wanna-bees drinking

with sharp fingernails
their condensation
of ruinous decay.

Barking dogs keep me awake at all times

of the night, while we sit alone and

view internets that taste like the
absinthe distilled in pockets
of our private parts.
Barking dogs' foul rhymes...

Shooting guns keep me ticked off!
at the split of early morning
while we drink the coffee'd sleep
of insomnia and shattered glass
mixed like sugar
in the cappucino -
nexus of kalashnikov!

-----

-----

pic: catherine jeffrey

www.cajeffrey.blogspot.com

Fast 130 November 27 2009 {Cinnamon Girl}

Cinnamon Girl

I had some toast with cinnamon girl,
with a butt tatooed on her rose,
a back tatooed on her owl,
and a gem on the side of her nose.

We had a chat in pumpkin spice
and I met with Bill, her brother,
an artist of the ink himself,
putting "bicep" on his mother.

Who herself was high and dry,
and kept money in her sock;
she lived within an old age home
she called this "dern dry dock"!

Her granny was grafitti
of cul-de-sacking lips;
she carried rum within her purse
and had a monkey on her hips.

We did not toast for pleasure,
we did not toast for joy;
she had a butt upon her rose,
and I was butter boy.

-----
notes
I dunno. where does one begin with this?

I guess everything is pretty straight forward...a lot about "butts".
cul-de-sac, the French for "a dead end" road or whatever, literally means "the butt of a sack", only "cul" can be a bit more vulgar if one wishes referring to the human anatomy.

monkey on her hips     monkey on her back

toast     it's what you think it is....maybe french toast, too.

butter boy      originally, just "but her boy", but it makes an image that can go wild.

...grafitti of cul-de-sacking lips...  

If you know French, you have some idea how appropriate and inappropriate this is!

Fast Day 130 mistake!

Cinnamon Girl

Fast Day 129 November 18 2009 {The Straw Hat}

The Straw Hat

The wind blew your gramma's hat
and it landed where you are;
you put it on and smiled.
It will rain your mother's ring
which will fall in grass nearby;
admire it unbroken.
It will flood your father's boots
and sweep them in the general flood;
dork-like boats of leather!
It will dawn your childrens' smiles
when you garden, and they see
that funny straw hat,
that unbroken ring,
and hear you laugh at waterfalls
and rivers of your artifice!

pic: micmac
--------
notes

a little early this week.

Fast Day 128 November 14 2009 {Going To Imrikeeya}

Going To Imrikeeya

The sun comes up;
it shines like the teeth
behind your eager and hungry smile,
no longer hidden behind your aromatic lips.

I hear the muttering
of my kinswomen sleeping
through the warfare of the long nights,
counting dowries, wond'ring how we shall live.

Men of honor,
just a handful, we are few;
but our camels were strong and brave,
now they wonder where we go without their admiralty.

A new land!
Far beyond Alexandretta:
we shall wear leather shoes, and we shall wear pants,
but shall keep the coarse shirt of Honor hid beneath!

Fast Day 127 November 7 2009 {Waiting On The Bed}

Waiting On The Bed

I wait for my brown-haired lover

like a ship of war resting at the quay,

lolling on  the flaccid waves;

arms behind head,

catching the breeze

within my hair.

She enters like the offshore wind;

cast off and let roam the trim white warship's sprit!

weigh the heavy double anchors!

head her to sea;

biting the bone

of the white waves.

Set sail upon the ocean wide,

seeking Circe's cave of intoxication!

Love's gasping halyards adorned with

naval emblems,

whole gale pennants,

hurricane flags!

-----

notes

offshore wind     blows from the land out to sea

sprit     the bowsprit, a small pole or spar crossing the fore sail diagonally from the mast to the upper aftermost corner, serving to extend the sail. In the picture above, you may see it extending out from the bow.

weigh...the..anchor     raise the anchor.

biting the bone of...waves     the white froth at the bow of a ship underway is often referred to as a "bone", as in the expression: "She (the vessel we are looking at) has a bone in her teeth", meaning the vessel is going fast and possibly in choppy water.

halyard     is the rope of the ship"s rigging upon which flags and pennats are hoisted. It is then the means of inter-ship communication via flag.

Circe     a lady Ulysses met on his travels.

It is a love poem, and - to my mind - is pretty explicit, so I beg pardon from anyone offended.

Fast Day 126 Octrober 31 2009 {Barn Raising}

Barn Raising

The Mandevilla vines do cost
a lot at Bordine's Nursery store;
wait a bit, just bide;
until the month of June
inventories are cleared out,
and you may pick it up for a song!

We took it to the barn-raising
planting it along a trellis,
where it will grow in time
to come, and shade provide
and sweetly cense the winds that
pounce the script of poems unfinished.

Newlyweds' life!, not burdened in debt;
we raise it today, and will it present
a gift to them both
and then to ourselves:
for the orchards of their lives will be
fruit of our determined husbandry!

-----

notes

pounce      a material for drying the ink on written documents back in the old days.

cense         to spread incense.

A view of life as simple and free; instead of debt and mortgages, the community invests time, material, and labor in the lives of the young, knowing that their futures will be the payback with interest.

The view seems totally mythological to us, but recall that we are a generation degraded from a golden age.

pix: lower: house:  Cindy Seigle   http://www.flickr.com/people/cindy47452/

Fast Day 125 October 23 2009 {Hanukah, Christmas, and Miracles}

Irrigation Circles on the way to Denver

Hanukah, Christmas, and Miracles

Imagine Hanukkah and Christmas
strung together on a rosary of beads
of endlessly profound onyx black,
one after the other.
Imagine geld for Mom and Dad
and toys for Billy and Sue!
Imagine the magic snows of Medical Denver
that melt off by ten A.M.
as we dreidel: tee-to-tum!
to tinker-toy clinics,
model train hospice,
and doll
and toy soldier
hospitals!
Where menorahs hang,
scissored from
construction paper,
colored in with crayon;
and green paper Christmas trees
with lights circular red
and asterisks of yellow.

Imagine an aeroplane from Detroit
from ancient aerodrome where
people dressed to the nines
and all was holiday flash!
The high and the mighty! -
cruising at thirty thou'
all the way to Magical Denver!
The early ice on the Mississipp'
cuts my barefoot eyes
like sun-light shards
that fell into
the embroidered carpet
of irrigated circle crops -
one after the other -
green laid-work of silk
on the back of Grandma's chair,
that my brother and I
knocked over
onto the floor
on Lakepointe Street...
and no one spoke for 20 minutes,
or more...
did we ever speak again?

De-iced planes
are like candy canes,
sugared in glucose curtain,
of that I am certain:
sweet aeroplanes!

It was a quick trip to Medical Denver,
not caring if I lived or died.
Go right down into those green circles
and we
would be
always together
for eternity!

Get up at three A.M.
drive to the airport;
but before that,
decorate the Christmas tree ahead
of time so it will be ready when we return
on Christmas Eve
or so;
but before that, I bought geld  for the god-kids,
chocolate,
and forgot it;
melting in my pockets,
messing up my cashmere...
but before we did that,
we couldn't imagine how sick she was!
No...couldn't imagine anymore
before
but now we do.
Imagine

---------
notes

geld
Geld is Yiddish for "gold". Hanukah geld was gold for the kids, chocolate wrapped in gold foil.
If you do not disburse it to the children, it stays in your suit pockets with tragic results.

menorah
the candelabra for Hanukah

dreidel
a top with four faces, marked N -nichts, G-ganz, H-halb, and S-stell ein

tee-to-tum
the word "teetotum" used as a song or invocation. A teetotum is a top, of which the dreidel is an example.
Edgar Allen Poe had a story of a madhouse where an inhabitant spun in his frenzy like a "teetotum".

laid-work
a type of embroidery
Here we're talking about a chair with laid-work decoration on the front and back.

Fast Day 124 October 17 2009 {Venus Rising in Aspen Grove}

Venus Rising in Aspen Grove

We took the road to Aspen Grove,
and turned off where the interstate ends:
where the funds ran out
or where the vision stopped
like the Cinema Palace when
the projectionist fell asleep.

The earth and sky come together
here, as close as spit -
and the misty net of moisture
cools the fevered lands
where sticks and kindling
once were houses.

Inside the brims of our white hats
we are circumpolar stars
in a time lapse photograph;
we cut through heaven
like quantum mandoline
picking a steel guitar.

Wild trail, ocean trail:
prison of the morning sun;
warden of the misty glen,
saving all time's elements together
for Venus to rise up again
before we Hummer home.

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 122 October 3 2009 {Ramses Entreats His Coy Lover}

Temple of Abu Simbel

At Abu Simbel, Ramses Entreats His Coy Lover


Before I ever saw thee sitting there,
I sensed your presence,
the sandy ore of your chestnut eyes
that fall on me
like a meteorite falls
in the waste lands: fire and iron!
So much has changed; it was so long ago
that nations bent their dusty heads
and obeyed on bended knee...
They prayed to Great Rameses!
Ruler of all you survey!
...
I forget. I forget the fragile thread
of our lives together...
O, when the ibis took wing!
O, when the figs grew in the Fayyum!
O, when first I sought to break the gold
plate inlaid with lapis that lay glacier-like
upon your breast, I panted as Anubis
and hunted the fierce brown kernels
that lay symmetrical
upon that ivory ground!
A thousand years I wait in pain,
and then a thousand more
until you come up the Nile...
until Sirius runs his course...
until Geb desires Nut again
and heavens and earth combine
your beauty to create -
beauty so fleeting -
impossible to carve into this stone!
Let me be a servant of immortal Isis, and
I shall sweep away the flowing sea of sand
from the bourne of your cruel resting place!
O, come to me in spring,
Daughter of the Heavens!
+
+
+
notes

Rameses was the pharoah who constructed the temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt.
The Fayyum was an area in the Egyptian desert anciently and modernly irrigated and bearing fruit.
Geb and Nut were the god and goddess of the earth and sky. Their embrace brings forth the world.
Sirius is the Dog Star.


Whereas Rameses could capture his grandeur and power within the huge carved temple for all eternity, he could not capture the beauty of his lover, whom he awaits endlessly.

Fast Day 121 September 26 2009 {At the Morning of Consciousness Cafe}

At The Morning of Consciousness Cafe


Kin I fix ya up with sumpthin' ta drink?
Huh?
...coffee...coffee...coffee...coffee
and a glass ah water...
all waters? Huh?
I don't like chemistry
may I milk fer my coffee?
Yeah, Hon.

Ready ta order? Huh?
Ya ready?
Yeah...eggs
eggs...flapjacks 'n buckwheat.
Warm this up fer ya? Coffee?
Sure...no...hand over cup like a retract
thunderdome over the stadium of life...huh?

Are ya still workin' on that? That concept there?
Still workin' on it?
Worryin' around the plate
like a dog with a bone?
Huh?

no more coffee...please...two hands over cup
and the waitstaff pours it anyway
hot upon yer hands
you yell and
everyone wakes up, like, they had been
asleep and dreaming in a tocata state
and fugue...huh?
staring with wide eyes.
the tip is a tenth and a half o' that
and then a bit
added to the pre-tax subtotal...
and you think it's such precision,
and you think you got it knocked,
and you think no one has keyed your car
within the parking lot!

Fast Day 120 September 19 2009 {Ghazelles}

Ghazelles

O, delight of the eyes!
dancing in the court of the sun!
dancing to the lyre of enchantment!
my bewildered thought...
my plain and simple passion...
beating my heart like a dhow upon
the Red Sea's storm!
the dynamite of touch!
razzia of devotion!
melt slowly...
into the ghazelle's soft, wet
tender muzzle!



*
*
notes

razzia - a desert raid by desert tribes

Fast Day 119 September 11 2009 {Winslow Homer Sky}

Winslow Homer Sky

She paints where Winslow Homer sat,
looking out to cyan sea's green pelagic vastiness,
through mullions deftly drawn upon a net
of highlight cedars, and glass panes
filled with carandache soul;
dreams the waking dreams of watercolor
and wonders where her brush has gone...
where could she have put it?
Her daughter will soon be wed...
where could she have put it?
The outboard motor's chug is heard

as the punt swings into view,
blinding sun, shooting flowers
on plates of translucent chlorophyll;
her husband returning home,
clothed in sunshine harlequin and clown,
and she dreams of oil paints, layering
thick coats of patina
over umbral background
as he slips into the sea.

*

*

notes:

I was early with this, and I meant to save it, but Blogger had different ideas, and I just did not want to waste time editing, so there it is - one week early.

I wrote the poem yesterday for my wife's birthday.

The persons in the poem could be Penelope and Odysseus, or Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams, or unknown wonders of life.

carandache - Russian word for pencil, also a brand name of crayon: caran d'ache.

Fast Day 118 September 4 2009 {On Watching TV}

On Watching TV


A filigree day on the filigree earth,
bound up in filigree and ribbon!
At home in a fragile Universe...
sit back and kick off a gaze at the TV
shining like a million crystal rhinestones
thrown upon a rug
of a garden
within a courtyard
of a palace
in Damascus
irrigated by streams with a pentagon
symmetry
and their rest punctuated by armies
marching on the edge of chaos.