the blue world now
a gigantic marsh
of beautiful serpents
Monthly Archives: June 2013
A Man and his Tusk
Rummaging through old photographs, I found a picture of a
distant relative holding his hands above his head, grabbing a
large curved tusk-like object. My imagination took over from there.
I was there under the fat black clouds,
Struggling with the jagged lightening –
Shouting through the tumultuous storm,
Groping like a half-dead man in the mud:
Cursing my dog for chasing that rabbit.
I was there when the wooden dam gave up,
And the river’s wrath was awakened –
Tearing trees, razing houses, drowning barns –
Carrying the debris of emptied lives:
Dolls, mitts, books; shoes, plates and loose pictures.
And then I found my dog pawing the water –
Desperate and loud in her frantic gyrations,
While I swallowed more river-water than grimy air.
And then I slammed into the strange tusk,
Strong like the bone of the ancient Behemoth:
Snatching the debris swept toward its ready claw,
Except my scared yelping dog.
Song of the Mad Woman by the Seashore
Inspired by La Chanson De La Folle Au Bord De La Mer, Alkan.
She continued to sit unmoved as the cold water from the sea slowly made its way past her feet and bottom, back and forth in the late November night on the coast of Northern France. The salty water was bitter against her naked ankles and pantied butt and it bit the fresh cuts on her feet, cut from walking through the thorns on the way to the long bare shore. Each time the waves overtook her and receded she lowered slightly in the sand. She looked out over her white breath into the deep blue of the ocean just as she had every night since her husband sailed away for fortune in another land that wasn’t so bitter and contentious. Each night, whether raining or sunning, snowing or sleeting, she sat on the shore of their former home waiting for his sure return. And as she sat she hummed the same eerie song to herself and to the whites of the waves and the cold moon as she turned the wet sand over and back with the blue blade of the knife she planned to use on his black heart next time she saw him walking up that white shore. She prayed each night for his quick return.
2/2008
Government
The air is thick with automotive farts;
My eyes burn with the sewered scent.
The television warns our dimes are parched –
My pocket book weighs less than rent.
Sulfur isn’t so bad with the proper guard.
Tomorrow the leaves will die and fall,
Sautéed and golden: a perfect rosy park –
Removing the deer for the industrial mall.
I watch the air move and feint its way
Through dark clouds of labour-laden breath;
Mockingbirds, robins heave and sigh –
Songs deprecated for a small swallow’s death.
O I miss the sheared green grass:
Blue skies have mated with epic adultery.
Oil is brandished on our slippery lives –
Imputed for our swollen Uncle’s perjury.
Thirtieth
for Claibird
Martini-laced impartial laughter
Happens to most all
Who dance with friends and sisters
Toasting their cabal
Fountains have a Siren’s charm
Rules are no concern
We’re wet on the lit wet steps
Nothing to discern
Trees seem irresistible
In their silent bark
Up and down we climb and clown
Mooning in the park
Morning sun is always early
But, there is the table
Gifts Juice Honey and Bubbly
Recounting what we’re able
Global Warming
The northern parula pokes her blue head
out into the March morning steam
pining for the green and the bees
The frost still clings to the twigs
weighed down by the lugubrious winter storm
heaving itself on the heavy white roofs
Smiles on school children, exploding suns
melting the branches, stretching the leaves
as she sings out to the absent-minded spring
a hearty song reviving the hairless trees
Voices
I find it hard to replace my voice
with the sounds and the thoughts
of someone else, some other one with
a story to tell. Anne Marie I’m sure
Is replete with wisdom and overwhelmed
with the scars of words and glares,
permeated with a story that would shift
the soul of an emotionless engineer
(Caught in his cubicle with skipping fingers
on worn down keys, grimy and germy
with the smudges of cold brilliance
imprinted on the tight-lipped plastic).
I am not a medium. I do not know
the craft of witches who can catch
another’s spirit in the earth’s windy
breath. I cannot re-present her eyes.
The musician takes you on a journey
over sewers and through teary fields
of smiling purple flowers, succumbing
to the wind’s dirty musical dancing.
I should take you on that shifting
journey. I should transport and transfer
the voice of your neglected neighbor
into your glassy eyes, bypassing sewage
Like a heart surgeon cleaning Pipes,
only I would put balloons in your mind
and your soul, not your trapped heart only.
Alas, I am dumb and deaf and clubbed.
I smile at all the right things and I
collect all the right books, but I can’t
dismiss the not misappropriate looks
of those who’ve read more than I write.
My voice is not diverse enough to thwart
the cat-calls of Ezra from the Pisan
prison. Rilke too snickers in the corner.
My eyes are also panther blind, barred.