Fast Day 273 August 25 2012 {The Years of Toxic Sleep}}

The Years of Toxic Sleep

Naiads of the river nymphs of the bureaucracy,
dryads of the city-county and manticore of our lives,
sweet medicine of mandragora and poppy of Cyprus:
O, the sleep of Reason!

Religions of wahhabi bulldozers, running on
delusional diesel of 'Uzza, Lat, and Manat, spreading
toxic water and damming aquifers, torturing aqueducts:
O, the sleep of Faith!

Feet quick to spill blood, feet slow to pilgrimage:
ferriers and blacksmiths who deform the holy word
between hammer of their soul and anvil of their own desires.
O, let the mu'ezzin cry:
O, believers! 
Sleep is better than this Freedom!

--
written as intolerant hard-liners attack Sufi mosques and shrines in Libya.
again, they are urged on by our "friends", the Saudis.

muezzin  - the caller to prayer    a Turkish form.

Fast Day 272 August 18 2012 {Sickness in Goray}

Sickness in Goray

Sickness, a sense of morbid,
came over me unaware;
it drained the light from day
and illuminated the night
with an eerie glowing sense
of the House of Usher!

What shall I cry?
and where shall I flee?
as the grass withers in
the drought and the flower fades,
- lilies of the field! -
under the breath of Adonai!

--
notes

on being sick
Goray is Isaac Singer's town of Goray.

Fast Day 271 August 11 2012 {Languish Out Loud}

Caligula's Ships on Lake Nemi

Languish Out Loud

I feel dissuaded from elegance
of style, mind, and manner;
I speak a quick, garbled texting
of harsh primitive
brutish, naked words
too cute
to be
forgotten...

Like Caligula's Nemian ships
built for candy and childish steps of
myst'ries of th'Egyptian goddess;
sunk by old age or
Claudius' decree:
dark moon
for the
misbegotten...

--
notes

What appears to be elegant disappears into the fog, just as Caligula immense pleasure ships built for worship of Isis sank into the Lake of Nemi, and others were sunk by Claudius' decree.

I use this to describe a conflicted sense of language - the educated versus the texting brief chop-chop rebus type of approach. I am not talking about slang or hip-hop or anything like that, for I consider urban slang to be very sweet.
I sense a diminution of my being - of anyone's being - into a smallness when language is so circumscribed... even if one has hundreds of Facebook friends. All of us are classical Romans and poets potentially, and all of us are dumb as driftwood if we do not constantly strive to "diversify" our language environment.

QUERY
should we write the last 3 sentences:

2 cute
2 B
4 gotten

(we do mention "texting" earlier.)

Fast Day 270 August 4 2012 {Pilot-Bread}

Pilot-Bread

Herring and pilot-bread for dinner!
Steamboat travelers on rough Michigan sea!
Not loaf bread nor bran
no water crackers, too,
viscidity
indigestability
attested by Graham.

Pilot-bread cut and pilot-bread fried,
easier eating, mixed with butter or lard,
or in boiling foam
of the fat of deep pork dipped,
yet a banquet
for those distressed
far from their home.
--
notes
memoirs of me sailing days upon the Great Inland Seas!

Graham -   of Graham cracker fame; he speaks on the evils of gluten and wheat breads.

Fast Say 269 July 28 2012 {The Wanderer}

The Wanderer

I will sing of him -
maybe -
I will sing a song of him,
Maybe no one will care -
maybe it will not matter
to the world at large,
but it shall matter to me!
Grande Grenouille
the Big French Frog
sits now with his mouth silent
looking out at the transient garage
through summer and through fall:
he wishes to speak...
words fail.

It is not important -
maybe -
to sing songs with painted words,
painted on retaining walls:
words nakedly in passion
hidden in the trees -
words I alone can sing-song!
Grenouille, bon ami,
a Frenchy from Poitou,
parents québecois et russe,
sets the scene and yells "action!" in his dream,
through winter and through spring
he wishes to love...
tears fail.

Perhaps - well,
it may not matter!
Perhaps - well,
I will merely sing of him,
Chikuhikun - The Axe,
who sat fearful now, his mouth closed,
in the madding crowd
and far, far away from man -
in solitude.
--
notes

grenouille  - a frog

Fast Day 268 July 21 2012 {Big Heart River}

Aerial View of the River's Mouth

Big Heart River

Hearts like fast canoes,
we portage where we haul the boats out
and move along the muddy trail,
until we come to the place where
the fish was caught that summer day.

Arms like cottowoods,
we unlade the fast canoes
into the small waters here, a mere
capful among the bull rushes;
we push them over white clay.

After many miles,
our breasts are covered in sweat
and our skin gleams in the setting
sun; we let our paddles run
to the place where houses are!

--
notes

Around and about Empire, Michigan

Fast Day 267 July 14 2012 {Be Still, My Heart}

A Saphiret Ring

Be Still, My Heart!

Oh, be still, my beating heart!
My love has gone away.
She said she's found another;
no longer can she stay!
I pawned my father's watch,
sold my mother's saphiret;
I gave her all my money...
be still, my beating heart!

May her memory disappear now,
and the odor of her hair!
my heart's endangered species,
a thousand miles of solitaire;
I suffered through my panic,
I endure the painful day,
I  walk the lonely nights;
Demon memory go away!

If we ever noonday meet,
if we stop to chat,
she's wears my old t-shirt now
and a yellow baseball cap;
I recall her clothes as lettuce leaves
tossed with my jeans on a chair,
in a salad of our passion,
mixed with gall and vinegar.


--
editing
11/12/2012 changed stanza 3 ll 5-6:
I recall them them (sic) as lettuce leaves
mixed with my clothes on a chair

and l 3:
 she's wears her shirt and jeans now,
 

Fast Day 266 July 5 2012 {I Did Not Forget...}

 Summer Holidays and Birthdays and Special Places

I Did Not Forget...

I did not forget your birthday, for I chose
to miss the feast of Punctuality,
an experiment in time to see
if anything would change -
but nothing did:
the world’s unchanging rumble, bouncing
off the subway tiles within my ears…
tedious eternity…

Dances and songs are born,
dances and songs die away;
Beauty will not last forever -
come along and see the stars!
Hey! Come along and dance!

Come here, my mother! Come here, my mother!
We are walking here; we are running here;
my younger brother and sister,
my younger brother and sister,
are crying now:
they think that they have lost their way:
sing them your intoxicating song,
a jewel from your Cretan crown!

This is the Father! This is the Father!
He comes in his nonchalant, ambling way,
looking very much preoccupied
by job reports and economic
information:
he will disguise his smile from us
until the very last minute, when
he scatters us with laughter!

Dances and songs are born,
dances and songs die away;
Beauty will not last forever -
come along and see the stars!
Hey! Come along and dance!

Older Brother and Sister coming along,
lightly bearing their wounds from casinos
of Afghanistan and of Iraq,
they keep their own private counsels
of their pain;
yet they come for the holiday;
they will dance, and they will sing
and will become nightingales!

Great-great-grandparents all across the street,
waiting for the infinite light to change,
straining to see their progeny:
is that my great-great-grandson there?!
great-granddaughter?
Waving to us like a great sea;
discarding death like a used Dixie cup,
they come to our birthday dance!

Dances and songs are born,
dances and songs die away;
Beauty will not last forever -
come along and see the stars!
Hey! Come along and dance!

--

Fast Day 265 July 1 2012 {Far Away}

Train From Far Away

Far Away

I come from Far Away,
where we drink the wine
even before the vines were created
in your Garden of Eden walmarts...
we do not wait for Creation!

You wear a plastic name
and speed about in steel,
dripping aluminium cobwebs
under the cowl of brilliant howling
immense and ponderous...

We eat the alien bread
baked in tholos shaped ovens
even before wheat was grown in fields,
but was only stars and rains of fire
that were our ersatz tears.

--
notes

Late getting this up; I was in terra incognita of the 1940s again.

Fast Day 264 June 24 2012 {Jim Dandy Morning}

Jim Dandy Morning

When I woke up this morning,
was unlike any other day...
when I opened my eyes,
I felt the blue go away;
and this was Monday morning
when the landscapers come
with the yell of lawn mowers
barely heard above
the cacophony,
the symphony,
the consternation,
of the leaf blowers.

Noon-day demon far away,
leaving on a jet airplane,
slipped past the TSA
with my sorrows in a bottle
in his carry-on bag:
in a little toiletry bag,
with tooth brush and shampoo
and all the meds:
grey lady zoloft,
blue niagara,
and sacramental
vicodin there, too.

Why the jet plane? Why the bags?
Traveling in his submarine,
Noon-day don't need no suit...
he's hip...
ready to boot!

When I come home, his brother's there
come from the TV,
come from the air!
yelling the business,
yelling the news!
yelling the weather,
selling smokes and booze!
using fear that maims...
selling disability claims!
using fears of health...
selling schemes of wealth!

Weak morning shine,
oh, weak daylight!
tepid water'd-down sun...
weak tequila sun...
like some star was drunk last night,
did something really stupid,
and cannot will the paparazzi day...
cannot will the day... away.
--

Fast Day 263 June 17 2012 {On The Road Again}

The Early Path

On The Road Again

When the brothers and the sisters, having

heard that Paul was back, back, back in town

they ran down the road to the Three Taverns

which was the venue for the camp meeting,

where I was a roadie and got scale:

United in a bond of common faith

we lived in peace and love and harmony:

no distinctions of power or fortune,

in the days of heavy metal martyrdom;

and I set up the amplifiers.

I drive the bus… I’ve been the head roadie

since the band split up and the elder James

stayed in Jerusalem the Memorious;

Paul now plays reggae in Illyricium,

and breeds Friday eve confusion.

No canned heat and  no coke to wash away

this growing season of tombs and monuments,

that disturb our dreams and forget the great

times – like Ovid in his sorry exile:

back when all had wicked chops!

--

notes

Saint Paul is the focus

Ovid  - the poet who was sent into exile somewhere on the Black Sea coast

Fast Day 262 June 10 2012 {A Friend To Thee}

Pearl Millet

A Friend To Thee

I'll be a friend to Thee,
unlike the wheat I'll never be;
on level land,
on high plateau...
where wanders my emmer soul.

I'll be a lover to thee,
unlike the rice I'll never be;
slowly swimming
Afric, Asian...
ancient grasses of the plain.

I'm the modern age to Thee,
rustic millet, no longer free!
orphan cereal,
homeless smile...
where old graveyards feed the stile.

 --
 notes
emmer - a form of spelt
homeless smile  -  there are gaps in it: discontinuous and uncomfortable
stile - a turning entryway to an area; the feeding of it implies a good deal of use.

It is paradoxical to me, as I am good and bad to Thee, and our relationship is complex.

Late getting this up, because I was in the 1940's.
--

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 260 May 27 2012 {Memorial Day In Goshen}

Memorial Day In Goshen

Holidays are thick with ghosts enough

within the barbecue of spirits:

dripping fats and smokey flavor pork

and collard greens and sweet cornbread,

with broken husks like china plates.

And in this festival sat Pharoah, tail-gating,

feasting on the porcine anatomy

and giving gifts of smells and smoke

to the spirits of his ancestrals.

Pharoah ruled in the Fayum of Bombay Beach,

by the ancient spirit lake of Cahuilla,

by the Temple of “The Luck O’ The Irish”

where liquor went for sapphires

on the shore of the Salton Sea.

Moses said when they first came here,

there was nothing but gang-banging and drugs

and shootings in the cities, in El Centro,

but now it was time to go…

If Pharoah did not agree, plagues would afflict

the land:  the waters would not engender life;

the waves would conceal firearms and guns,

overflow the banks and encroach your ground,

killing first-born, male and female.

Eight million fish died in one day alone

in the piscicidal divine rage on Bombay

Beach:  Death’s tilapia silver carpet

rolling gleam like undulant beer can empties!

Well, in Chicago alone  ten people

died of forty-three that were shooting:

holiday barbecues

zombies in Miami

we’re gonna miss these days sometime…

when Pharoah change his mind...

--

notes

Goshen - the area in Egypt where the Israelites lived

Bombay Beach - a vestigial city on the south eastern shore of the Salton Sea

Fayum - an area of lower elevation in Egypt where Lake Fayum is located.  As it is a depression, there is a parallel to the Salton Sink - where is the Salton Sea - in California.

Cahuilla - the Salton Sink anciently was the lakebed of Lake Cahuilla

Luck O' The Irish - a quondam bar and watering hole in the heyday of the Salton Sea

piscicidal  -  pronounced pis-ki-side-al , meaning the killing of fish. The Salton Sea began to experience massive fish die-offs in the late 1970's due to a number of factors.

This Memorial Day past, 43 were shot and 10 died in Chicago, and there was a real zombie attack in Miami, and I feel very much 'Resident Evil-frame of mind'.

The battle to save the Salton Sea in ongoing. The California Supreme Court most recently hammered another nail into its coffin, however, and water will not be diverted to maintain it. The Salton Sea is in a low depression called the Salton Sink. It has been filled with varying amounts of water over hundreds of years, anciently being an extension northward of the Gulf of California.
It's most recent incarnation was caused by a break in 1905 in the irrigation system supplying water from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley in California.

It's all about death society and holidays! 

This poem marks the accomplishment of 6 years of this blog. I finally got home from my parents' place  - who are in their 90's and have no internet access - and got this up. 

I have another due for this Saturday, the 2nd of June.

I realize that a lot of this poem requires some familiarity with thje Salton Sea and Bombay Beach, but they are metaphors for the large nation, and there is info on Google and Wikipedia.

#260

I shall be a little late getting #260 up on the blog. I shall be at my parents who do not believe in new-fangled computer things.
--

Fast Day 259 May 13 2012 {Mothers' Day 2012}

 Nobori Battle Flags

Mothers' Day 2012


from beyond the moon, or the Milky Way,
the robins come each spring in robin time -
which lasts until the goldfinch nesting comes -
Susan scrubs winter from the balcony,
and plants the first pansies, as colorful
as Japanese nobori battle flags!

this drama recurs with movement calm as sleep:
the magic of the robin’s nest, as we
give up that porch of sweet spring and winter
divide, giving them the place for four weeks
while balcony flower boxes are stacked
everywhere that sun is available!

we await young robins, we unemployed
warriors recruited by Shimada
of the Seven Samurai, battling
the nest-thieving doves’ mindless banditry:
driving them off with well-placed blows and shouts,
which are the fruits of their insolence and crimes!
when we end our vigil in June,  we smile -
having drunk a tonic of the wilderness !

The nest in 2012

--
notes

I am putting this up early, since it is Mothers' Day today. I had this poem and the one about the engaged couple, which was a papal commission... well, not a papal commission, but a commission, so I had a superfluity of the lyrical this week.
This is for week 5/13 through 5/19, so number 260 will be in week 5/21 through 5/27, which would mark 6 years.

This poem compares pansies to the Japanese battle flags called nobori, and presupposes a little familiarity with the film masterpiece The Seven Samurai.  The Magnificent Seven just will not suffice.
In the Seven Samurai, the samurai warrior Shimada Kanbei gets together a band of seven unemployed samurai to defend a peasant village against bandits.
Doves are paralleled to bandits, because doves are dirty and cannot even build nests.

Fast Day 258 May 11 2012 {An Engaged Couple Viewing Constable's 'The White Horse'}

An Engaged Couple Viewing Constable’s 'The White Horse'

The Melancholy of a summer day,
governing sky unsure of its mandate
to rain or not; certainty gives way:
to lighten, dark, to storm or to abate?

Bride and groom: vibrant morning star and sun;
they cast their spell upon the River Stour,
and  amaze the clay-pipe smoking boatman,
and throw his horse into a mild uproar!

Her gown a messenger of evening clouds,
wearing the cirrus of the bright sunrise,
punctuating the humdrum of the crowds
with bold calligraphy before our eyes!

Two people alike in love’s advocacy,
Uncommon in mutual fidelity!

--
notes

Written for two people, who are soon to be married much earlier than they had originally planned. I was writing about a photo I had of them at an exhibition, but cannot go into detail, in order to protect their privacy. She was wearing a beautiful red gown as they stood before Constable's painting, hence the emphasis on red.

I have not seen her in years, and him I have never met, so I had to study Constable and his paintings to be able to say anything at all. The painting may be viewed at:
http://www.grahamdragon.co.uk/conwhi.htm
or
http://collections.frick.org/media/view/Objects/80/3504?t:state:flow=e01b8fb1-3864-4caa-9cd1-d6e8dfeaae85

Constable's skies were revolutionary, and he considered the sky to be the "primary organ of sentiment" in a painting.
In this poem, we go from a sky partially cloudy: the weather could improve or deteriorate; this is the source of the "melancholy". We progress to true love, however, and all is well!

In addition, to those who make apologies for their poetry, I think this poem to be a good example of that which can be expressed in no other way. Poetry speaks up to the limit of the ineffable!
Poetry is the Large Hadron Collider of Intelligible Reality.
--

Welcome May 8, 2012 : The Nature of Poetry

Welcome to
kartika angga dwi pratiwi,
lamp and light,
sundara raman,
and JohnnyDiamondSF.

If I have missed anyone, let me know and I'll be totally befuddled.

I posted a piece about Poetry on my other site this A.M., but it was intended for this site and actually for this welcome.


Poetry

Why Poetry?

A lot of people have odd opinions about poetry, but it seems that a lot of people have odd opinions about a lot of things these days, so that indicates nothing  except the prevalence of odd notions.
People tend to look down on poetry. I do not have the luxury of being able to do that.
Some people feel they must apologize for their poetry, but I think this is an extension of our society's normal marginalization process, which instills a sense of inferiority and "otherness" into vast numbers of our fellow beings, keeping them at bay.

After two weeks thinking about poetry, I have come this far:
(Note: when I say "intelligence" below, I mean the entire network of intelligence and cognition in a human being, not just "smarts"; I mean the entire neural network and what is implies over time.)

(1) Writing Creatively is a sharing of Intelligent Experience based on the assumption of Communality.

Oratory, Essays, Sermons, and Science papers go to extreme lengths to spell things out and ensure that the audience understands and - hopefully - may at times be persuaded.

Not so Fiction. Fiction ignores the business of building proofs and assumes we are companions already: we eat at the same table of intelligence. Scientists may read the papers of their scientific opponents, but it is rare that people read the fiction appraised highly by people they perceive as being decidedly different from themselves, for readers of fiction assume a communal intelligent experience of the world, not a confrontation with alien views: there is no long-lasting logic to meld alien ideas into an intelligence that has reached a certain level of complexity.


(2) Writing Creatively is an effort to recreate and re-invoke Intelligent Experience

Words are not used merely as enumerators and signs, as they were in early scripts, but are the things of the rhapsodist who recites the works of Homer, and conveys the audience into an altered reality: the reality of Troy recreated and re-invoked, and thus transforms the community of intelligence - the audience - into altered states.


(3) Poetry is Writing Creatively Confined to a Small Space

Poetry needs not meter nor rhyme; poetry only requires a crystalline growth, a certain structure - not necessarily unchanging. Meter was an ancient mnemonic; The Iliad was prose constructed to be remembered and recited, and used meter to aid the process.
Sappho and Simonides were poetry, lyric poetry.
Whereas fiction may ramble and become amorphous (Joyce's Finnegan's Wake comes to mind), not so poetry. As intelligent fellow beings experience Life, Poetry seeks to recreate the Shock of the New, whereas prose seeks to recreate histories and annals of what was once New.

--
Now this is a good example of what happens when we put our minds to something. Of the three points above, only number three was apprehended by me before 2 weeks ago. The idea that epic poetry was actually prose never occurred to me before, for I allowed the notion that poetry requires meter rule my mind.

We each take life like a deck of cards, we shuffle it, then pass it on to someone else who does the same thing, only each time we touch the cards, we add kings and queens in medieval panoply and symbols from the Levant: gold, silver, attar of roses;  all resplendent against the busy-ness of the four suits from ace to ten:
we hold all cards in communality, but the face cards, kings, queens, and jacks, in all their static ferocity are our poems!
And as we share them, we extend this game of life we play.

--

Fast Day 257 May 6 2012 {Islands In The Ocean} (1)

Islands In The Ocean

Trees swimming in the midst of distant sights:
wooded stepping blocks within a vast sea,
dropped by a Bauhaus regularity;
when seen afar: an artificial atoll
well stocked with architectural delights.

As we draw near, this order we impeach:
these small appendices to aesthetic
become Edenic kingdoms in turmoil:
Island Galaxies light-years in the Stream!
... or, at least, off some distance from this beach...

--
notes

Islands, Architecture, Gardens

impeach  - to change an earlier impression

small appendices to aesthetic -  Hegel considered gardens to be small and unimportant parts of aesthetics, the theory of beauty. Gardens were like an appendix to architecture.

(From a distance, the islands looked very regular, and drawing near they took on a jungle of detail, and I thought of the change from hazy nebula to vast Island Galaxies, from regular to complex, and felt small in the universe!..., but, they were still just islands a ways away from the sandy beach. Whether Art or Nature, it was still beyond my grasp, and I sort of give up my galactic viewpoint and become ironical in tone, changing from galaxies to standing on a beach... probably in a bathing suit and looking pale... possibly flabby.)
--

Fast Day 256 April 29 2012 {In The Time Of Nectar Famine}

In the time of nectar famine,
the winds are filled with pollen:
aromatic like spice from the Islands
of Cockaigne and Creole spice cake;
a bawdy savory of genital
peppercorns of trees:
crabapple and dogwood.

In the time of spring blood heat,
the rains come after midnight;   
shaking down half the cherry blossom corymbs,
leaving half pennant on the trees:
accounting of patchwork flowering cloves!
pink lanterns in suspense
between heaven and earth!



--
notes


a happiness to balance the previous poem.
spring pollen from crabapples can be very heady.
The scene is a park where crabapples have bloomed, the air is filled with their peppery (to me, at least) scent, and rains have knocked so many blooms down that everything: sidewalk, lawn, trees, and sky are perfectly pink, and one is indistinguishable from the other. (real story.)... so it is a hard "accounting" of the spicy tree blooms.

Cockaigne - mythical land of plenty or make-believe. I am thinking of it as a French usage:
 (Wikipedia)
George Ellis printed a 13th century French poem called "The Land of Cockaigne" where

the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing.

and that matches up with "creole" which gives the idea of a mixture or melang.

pennant - "to leave half pennant" means "to leave half (of them) flying like pennants on the tree branches."

Fast Day 255 April 22 2012 {On Meeting Neighbor Knowles In The Cemetery}

On Meeting Neighbor Knowles In The Cemetery

We walked to a primeval grove
of a ripeness passed beyond its time:
Absalom Vandever four-square stood
a funeral obelisk inscribed,
cut with the names of all his wives
and their progeny of his despair:
Afra was the first
who bore James of the three days:
she died in ’75, and the child
followed soon thereafter in the last
two of his toll of days:
he knew, Absalom thought, and inscribed
upon the  face of stone:
The face of God is the first delight!
And the only delight for thee!

On each remaining triune face
was a woman’s name and a child’s
who was born to pass right on,
at least by the testament of this granite here!
Four wives, five children, the last were twins
a final paradox to Mr. Vandever
not fathoming fruit and multiplycation
combined with a cursed division...
Neighbor Knowles says no tomb of Absalom
is hereabouts and no one kens  his farm;
maybe all knowledge has disappeared…
or folks fear the bane of lecher death
that could not wait, and hied them all
to his dance in the Puttygut Road cemetery.

“Being in troubled times, I wonder
what will break the spell
of this profound despair of mine,
this my titanic hell!”


--
notes


True experience...
I use the word "triune" because there are 3 remaining faces; this may be illogical from a certain point of view.
It is sad.

Fast Day 254 April 14 2012 {Walking Through Cranbrook}

Walking Through Cranbrook

Give me paper; give me pen!
give me a monumental poem
as enduring as Saarinen’s fountain,
with Orpheus ascending.

When is the last time you heard
a poem in praise of strength
a poem in praise of valor?
bronze statues black as leather!

If I sat and gazed from a window
through potassium oxide glass,
from the second floor bedroom
behind a brick-work façade,

I would transcend the years
back to the time when my soul
was not a Taliban,
but was a student all enamored!

I would wander back and re-create
the ruined boathouse by the lake
which in desuetude still stands,
loyal guard to love long gone!

The Old Boathouse at Cranbrook

--
notes

On the grounds of Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Eliel Saarinen was the first resident architect.
These echoes of art re-program my mind...

Fast Day 253 April 8 2012 {Spring Plantings}

Spring Plantings

Susan planted pansies yesterday
and I moved them in the evening
to protect them from the freeze
although hardy plant they be;
the full moon shined upon them,
and the full moon frost cuts deeply
in the spring.

I stood and watched that fulgent star,
like Hesiod stood within his vineyard
together with his brother, Perses,
in their childhood, Demeter bless’d,
and like them waited as Pandora
opened a jar of corrosion
to melt gold.

So we plant our flowers in hard times,
awaiting life’s newness once again:
like old vines who have sent down roots
deep in the soil, we are pruned again,
but await the graft of spring’s new
scion wood into our wounded souls:
Easter time!

--
notes

The references are to Hesiod's Works and Days, a poem from ancient Greece.

Demeter - great Mother, source of wealth and growing things; associated with the Golden Age.

Pandora – according to Hesiod, opened a container of evils, ruining the perfection of the world; a reference to the present less-than-perfect state of affairs.

scion wood – wood to be grafted onto existing stocks

We have faith in a return to goodness after winter, after the end of a golden age, after we have been cut and wounded.

Fast Day 252 April 1 2012 {Being There}

Being There

I woke up this morning and found
the twentieth century laying
on my front porch like a newspaper
that had been out in the rain all night,
its screaming headlines now weeping
tar-like sins and ink everywhere;
the twenty-first century flashed
and died, an electric light bulb
failing as I trashed the newspaper.

I woke up before first light;
in the coal-oil lamp hours that
are angular and severe,
like an unfurnished house,
full of promise, austere yet rich,
like an empty Shaker meeting hall;
I walked out in the rain:
let God’s leather
take God’s weather…

Shaker Hall

--
notes

I almost entirely forgot to post this.
I called it "Being There" because I was there...  Zen-thing...

There is an antithesis between the first and second stanzas expressed by the first sentence in each.

Fast Day 251 March 24 2012 {Lullaby}

Lullaby

I am close, do not fear,
little one, little one;
you can feel my heart beating
like a drum, like a drum;

Je suis ici, aupres de toi:
ne crains rien, crains rien;
je t' protège du monde sauvage,
ma main… dans la main.

--
notes
stanza 2

I am here, nearby:
do not fear, do not fear;
I shall protect you from the savage world,
my hand in your hand.