Aug 2006
VOL XIV, Issue 8, Number 161
Editor: Klaus J. Gerken
Production Editor: Heather Ferguson
European Editor: Moshe Benarroch
Contributing Editors: Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp; Oswald Le Winter
Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Pedro Sena
ISSN 1480-6401
INTRODUCTION
Donna Bamford
Chartres Donna Bamford
Ibiza
The Garden is Full of Butterflies Today
The Glitter of the Garret
La Vie en Rose
CONTENTS
David Fraser
The Recycling Man
One Lady Lost
Impressions
Impermanence
Night Tracks
C.E. Chaffin
The Deprivathon
Dimitris P. Kraniotis
Fictitious line
Ideals
Illusions
The end
Rules and visions
One-word garments
Denials
What I ask
The "don’ts" and "zeros"
Ashes
Maybe
Limits
Ernest Williamson
What of the Cedar Trees
The Importance of Liquid Rainbows
The Jazz of Old Wine
Empty Cup
Graham Tiler
I DO NOT THANK YOU
THE LAST DARK HEART OF CALLING
MORE DREAM SINISTER (PART 1)
Jim Benz
There is a chair
Jenni
Ignis Fatuum
JERRY VILHOTTI
Storella: "Sticks and Mighty Stones"
Lynn Strongin
1. Ambulance
2. The valley of the shadow
3. Duvet
4. Shuttered from Schoolroom & Street
5. I saw the whole world in the rearview window
6. ". . .a fine November morning, and the close soon"
Specificity
POST SCRIPTUM
Melanie Simms
Clouds
Good Fortune
The Daes-Eage
Colors
Donna Bamford
Chartres
~~~~~~~~
We went on a jaunt
To Chartres one day
An American friend and I
I’d say it was worth the while
The structure itself,
Made all the more beautiful
By confetti-like stains
Mottled and white
Like icing sugar
But the rose window
And a bird in flight behind it
In the sunlight
An epiphany of rapture
Ibiza
~~~~~
Ibiza is a fine place.-
was when I was there
one windy March
full of Germans and Brits.
a nude beach
where we went nude
just for the fun of it -
I with my camera in hand
taking pictures of a green bottle
and four oranges
lapping against the grey-beige beach
in the pristine turquoise water
too cold to swim really
but we took shelter from the wind
behind a sand dune
and there pretended to sunbathe
and all around the fields
aflame with wild flowers
scarlet poppy and little lemon ones
and lavender
at night we would eat in our favourite
Argentian restaurant
mainly because of the dessert
some sumptuous caramel concoction,
heavenly
my companion bought me turquoise earrings
and then we ate several pieces of cake
at a bakery by the placid harbour the next day
To Formentera
and there a little paradise
but I must getting to Rome
a ferry from Ibiza to Barcelona
the Mediterranean indigo now,
sparking like fresh-cut diamond
so I enjoyed my little Spanish holiday
sun, wind, and Latin passion
The Garden is Full of Butterflies Today
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The garden is full of butterflies today
flitting among the flocks
and cosmos,
a Christian symbol
I like to see them
it is a good day
and when the balloons go up
it is a perfect day.
I liked the May garden best
the tulips and the cherry tree
July is good though too
colourful with the magenta bee balm
and my peach verbascum,
so delicate and fragile
like fairies’ wings
Not too hot this July
Yet sometimes in August the heat comes
as it has been it has been
just right to attract the muses
The Glitter of the Garret
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I had a garret once
in the Latin Quarter
a chambre de bonne
to be correct
right in the heart of the Quartier Latin
I did not know my good fortune then
or I would have written reams and reams
as it was I read Rimbaud
and Hemingway
wrote long descriptive letters
some of which I still have
Oh I envy me those days
when I was young in Paris
for somewhere in my glittering dreams
there had been the glitter of the garret
when I was young and full of rose-coloured dreams
La Vie en Rose
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At Place de la Bastille,
the marina,
on a sailboat,
like Anais Nin,
I am aboard my houseboat
I shall have duck a l'orange for dinner
The spirit of Paris
is like a coquette,
seductive, beautiful
aware of her beauty,
yet charming
stylish and gay and witty,
The spirit of Rome
Is like a voluptuous older woman
with many lovers,
young and old
she is a mistress and a mother
a doyenne,
the spirit of Florence is masculine,
an artist, a sculptor, an architect,
and they are all holy
all the cities and towns and villages
of Europe, in my eye
through rose-coloured lenses
and one day I shall shuffle off
this puritanical soil and finally go home
to where my heart lies
David Fraser
The Recycling Man
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I drop a palm full of garbage
into the recycling bin, early
morning summer mist
drifting across the RV camp.
A guy with his winter-beater van
is going through the trash.
I say, "How ya doin'?"
He looks up, no words.
I'm only one step removed myself
from homeless, camping
really;
he looks up either figuring
a response ain't going to earn
him anything or he now sees
himself as invisible, untouchable
or maybe he heard me say,
"What ya doin'?"
suspicion, paranoia,
be silent like a rabbit
in the headlights, heart
beating faster
or maybe it's just him thinking
"I've been doing this so long,
I really, really don't give a fuck."
One Lady Lost
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Atlantis, Reno
From this lost place of paradise
she rises from the lush carpet
sea foam from the wave,
her earth a jaded, consumptive
shore of gluttony.
She hears the siren's call,
deposited from the shuttle bus,
the ferry to this neon underworld
of flashing lights;
dressed out of season and indoors,
fur hat, earflaps, flightless wings,
heavy boots, red wool, arms
too long sweater scuffed,
purse gaping wide, cradled in an arm
so out of step with the click of poker chips,
the jingle of the coins
streaming from the slots,
the stuffing buffet bellies
dribbling mouths, bloating in
this seedy paradise of excess pain.
She wanders up and down the aisles,
her winter gear as shocking as
the bruises on her face,
the lesions locked within her heart.
Impressions
~~~~~~~~~~~
Higher up from Thetis Lake
where stark hydro towers
loop wire across the meadow cleared
there are places where deer have slept
flattened dried thin stalks of grass
among the Garry Oak recovering from the slash,
these round sensuous curves of grass
warm body impressions
curled sleeping in the rain
in summer heat are where lovers lie and love
where fusion's force is healing up the scars.
Impermanence
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am sunshine, deep heat,
rich rays warming up my skin.
I am this mass of photons floating by,
caught for a winking moment
from beneath a cloud.
I am these parts of change,
nostril hairs that grow,
bristle on my face, chipped nails
capturing black grit while weeding.
I am the impermanence of thought,
the ever changing flow of water
through my pipes, this bag of chemicals, I am
this grasping creature
gone passionate on what I love
who finds this love,
these evanescent loves, so fleeting,
so like the raindrops lost
somewhere deep within the pond.
Night Tracks
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Long after slipping
beneath the waves of sleep
the ice steps to the cabin
filling up with snow,
the night tracks come,
curiosity sensing heat
escaping through the crack
beneath the door.
In the morning light
pink and slanting through the trees
the feathered fanning lines
of Steller's Jay, its feet
the prints written on the snow,
the indentations of the snowshoe hare
down the ice steps along the deck
or smaller feet of tiny moles
who scurry on the surface
and dig below.
All this visiting at night
while I fall into that other time
of leaving footprints just as real.
C.E. Chaffin
The Deprivathon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(An account of quitting smoking)
I
Nothing satiates the body
like tobacco gas,
stuffing each bronchiole
until alveoli collapse.
I want to quit, I want to quit
but I can't give up my cigarette.
Without tobacco my chest
is an abandoned altar,
my lungs empty gloves.
I'm astonished by the emptiness.
II
How can I wax oracular about a deadly habit? Shall I say, "I saw the best
minds of my generation destroyed by white voodoo missiles from the
military industrial suicidal tobacco coven,
Red Man's revenge funded by oil-wealthy Oklahoma Indians,
Saw the blue smoke climb the undefended caves of their nostrils like
mutated kudzu planting a Manitou deep in their unsuspecting ribs
To one day metastasize and waste their brains for the prize of a green
oxygen tank and a wheelchair?
O Cancer! O Emphysema! O Stroke! O Coronary!
O insidious degenerative enzymes from secret hybrid leaves developed
for mass destruction!
O refreshing Salems in a waterfall among the green ferns!
O perfect models with khaki slacks and sweaters tied around their necks
sailing off Martha's Vineyard, liberated by Newports!
O Marlboro man who never talks but rides by purple mountains and
orange sunsets in his fleece-lined suede jacket!
O Virginia Slims who keep that weight off for a woman who is only a
clothes rack for designers!
O be happy, go Lucky, Winston tastes good, the pause that refreshes,
smooth, smooth, smooth as polished agate.
But I'm not starving hysterical naked only addicted to inhaled nicotine
that jolts the brain in seven seconds, instantaneous hydrogen jukebox
pleasure loop!
III
Mornings are made worse
by smoking too much while drinking
the night before, which temporarily dulls
the pain of inhalation. You wake up
feeling like a crematorium, still
have to have that morning rush
while the coffeemaker burbles
and the refrigerator hums.
I can't ignore the pleading quality of machines—
a whir, a whine, as if a wish for petting,
as if they sympathized somehow
with the loss of choice that defines addiction
because they have no choice at all.
I see the damage of this nefarious habit
in finely furrowed faces,
blue-gray with sunken cheeks.
faces that purse their lips to exhale,
called the "blue bloaters" of emphysema.
I see the damage in the barrel-chested wheezers
who hyperventilate to compensate,
named the "pink puffers" of chronic bronchitis.
Yet these don't terrify us like the crab,
the black crab of cancer.
Lung cancer patients stink.
No one wants to play with them
on the field or at the rink,
no one wants to stay with them.
Because cancer is possession by an alien--
cells gone native, cells too dumb to know
they are destroying their host,
moles burrowing deep, scratching
at the pulmonary tree with tiny claws
breaching ligands and membranes
in the darkness of bronchial tunnels.
IV
Depression and loss look much the same
along life's hedgerow, still, differ
as hawthorn from holly, as grape from pear.
Loss is a coin tossed down a well
until you hear the plunk of water and weep;
in depression you never hear the coin
drop.
Nicotine, like Benzedrine,
has antidepressant properties.
Deprived, the mind shudders
like an old engine.
Who will pull this train?
I think I can, I think I can,
desiring this man's art and that man's scope
the sea has jaws and a gray-green coat.
what hangs from the jaws is pulverized
to pebbles until the shingle rattles
with every beat of shore break.
Sans nicotine the disconnection is extreme,
the stoppage, hesitation, grappling
for numbers, addresses, details--
How I mourn the vanished
power of tobacco's reign!
V
My parents smoked, it was not unpleasant.
It was present at Christmas with the holly wreath
and the brown couch with the little nubs
from which my mother smoked
and read us Hiawatha between puffs.
Mom smoked when I was a fetus.
Bad, bad mother!
Mom withheld her nipples from me.
Mean, mean mother!
She tried to nurse my older brother but failed.
Weak, weak mother!
At birth I knew what she knew:
There was a substitute.
VI
I saw the spirit of fire,
Tobaccohontas
in her coronet of coals
dancing in a leaf skirt
of golden brown,
her incendiary thighs
burning burning burning
Before her only God breathed fire.
Afterwards came dragons,
venomous snakes and toads.
Finally man's penis swelled
and woman's labia grew
bloody-purple, pink and wet.
I heard Tobaccohontas speak:
"I burn for you, Brave.
Do not forget your love.
Cleave me with your tomahawk,
undo the seam so lightly stitched by nature
or my own nails will ream it,
drive your spear into the ravenous slit
beneath the golden curls of my mons,
pound me as a bear ruts a sow in a ditch
littered with acorns and salmon bones.
My mouths have swallowed
the seed of many warriors, come."
Ah, Tobaccohontas,
I once fingered your moist fragrance
in blue pouches of Drum tobacco.
Your scent still calls to me
from the tent of the elders
with their pipe of bone and feathers
but moderation is beyond me.
I must devour and be devoured.
Hear me now:
My lava grows hard in your ocean.
Your undersea cleft shapes me.
My tip breaks off like a coal in your wet purse.
I shudder, deflate and die.
You are the siren of my death.
I stub you out in ashtrays
as if they were vampire coffins
through which to pound my filter.
Now I can only inhale
the memory of your forbidden pleasure
and cast its usage toward some future
beyond obsession. Forgive me
Princess; you were the best.
VII
Withdrawal still twists me on its spit.
I suck my toothbrush in a rage,
spit out toothpicks like a nail gun.
When then is there an end to it?
Was slavery worth the wage?
No--I must--can't--think of it...
I'll wash my picture windows instead.
After the Windex and the suds
the accumulated slime runs
yellow and gray onto my rag like phlegm,
the same sick mucous color you get
from washing an ashtray--
God, I was living in an ashtray--no,
I was a living ashtray.
Yet when the windows were clean
I was at a loss at how to reward myself.
A glass of water? A walk in the park?
A swim at the gym? A pitcher of warm spit?
Nothing beats a cigarette.
I must hold on hold out hold to
hold forth hold back hold sway--
Mommy, don't let me die an ashtray.
VIII
There is an absence greater than absence of life
there is a hollow hollower than death
when the lights go off in the gunman's eyes
and every man becomes a purse.
There is a loss greater than loss of pleasure
as when the nurse removes your pacifier.
and the wailing of your deprivation
goes unnoticed in the bassinet
and your infant body shakes
into the grief of sleep.
Or later, standing at the railing of your crib
you want your mother
but there is no mother
no aunt, no grandmother, no one
to assuage the fearful darkness.
Eventually you imagine Mommy saying,
"Why can't you change yourself?"
After such abandonment
your life may be determined
by oral deprivation as you seek a fix
for the milk-dewed nipple you missed,
for the rhythm of your sucking,
the bliss of your face pressed
against the warm pillow of her breast.
IX
There is so little poetry left
I suffer its loss as much as cigarettes.
It may leave a bigger emptiness.
Is poetry an addiction, too?
Sometimes I think so, especially
when I am around poets
and feel the heat of their narcissism
rise like steam from a meatloaf,
their endless infantile hunger to be heard,
their sweet scent of self-congratulation.
Too bad poets can't give themselves a fix;
they have to victimize an audience.
(Plato was right and wrong.
He never imagined the democratization of poetry,
fearing Aeschylus and Aristophanes
not Angelou and Bukowski.)
Forget poetry, poetry sucks.
Poetry sucks donkey dicks in the dead of night.
Poetry sucks the butt holes of rabid bats
Poetry sucks the big Walla-Walla like a Staubsauger
Poetry is a concentration camp for narcissists.
Poetry is eternal competition with every poet, living or dead.
Poetry causes stillborns, curdles milk and stains the altar with pig's blood.
Poetry is bread in the mouth of a pigeon spreading Legionnaire's disease.
Poetry is the word flu.
Fuck poetry.
X
When asked why she didn't quit,
Bette Davis replied, "Then how would I talk?"
gesturing with her cigarette holder.
And what if as a non-smoker
I become seriously depressed
and the faces of familiar cars look strange
and I am frightened by doorknobs and tea kettles,
when whatever spark of self I knew
flies up and out the chimney into the wailing dark?
Will I zero-sum it and light up again?
That is one danger--
when smoking or not smoking
appear equally pointless
in a universe without pity
and you don't care one way or the other--
in that state, which always returns,
I vow to pretend to care
against all evidence.
The other danger is similar--
on a very good day,
say your daughter's wedding
or your grandson's baptism,
when the joyful conviction
of invulnerability whispers
"You've achieved control
and can have just one."
When I get the urge to smoke
I will remember the prophet Isaiah
and how his lips were sealed
by a coal from God's altar.
My lips are sealed
against you, Tobaccohontas.
Climb up a billboard,
spread your legs for a magazine.
Go tempt another brave,
for the god of science declares
that in seven years
my blackened honeycombs
will wash themselves clean.
In my pulmonary spring
the cilia will bloom,
the mucous cells rejoice
because I have a choice
and I choose not to smoke.
Addiction ends with this.
In seven years I expect
Pink lungs! Pink Lungs! Pink Lungs!
Dimitris P. Kraniotis
Fictitious line
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Smokes
of cigarettes
and mugs
full of coffee,
next
to the fictitious line
where the eddy
of words
leans against
and nods,
wounded,
to my silence.
Ideals
~~~~~~
Snow-covered mountains,
ancient monuments,
a north wind that nods to us,
a thought that flows,
images imbued
with hymns of history,
words on signs
with ideals of geometry.
Illusions
~~~~~~~~~
Noiseless wrinkles
on our forehead
the frontiers of history,
shed oblique glances
at Homer's verses.
Illusions
full of guilt
redeem
wounded whispers
that became echoes
in lighted caves
of the fools and the innocent.
The end
~~~~~~~
The savour of fruits
still remains
in my mouth,
but the bitterness of words
demolishes the clouds
and wrings the snow
counting the pebbles.
But you never told me
why you deceived me,
why with pain
and injustice did you desire
to say that the end
always in tears
is cast to flames.
Rules and visions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Life counts
the rules;
the sunset, their exceptions.
Rain drinks up
the centuries;
spring, our dreams.
The eagle sees
the sunrays
and youth, the visions.
One-word garments
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Waves of circumflexes
storms of adverbs,
windmills of verbs,
shells of signs of ellipsis,
on the island of poems
of soul,
of mind,
of thought
one-word garments
you wear
to endure!
Denials
~~~~~~~
A roar of cars
seals the dawn
with short-cut answers,
with unyielding denials
that are repeated
explicitly
every sunset.
What I ask
~~~~~~~~~~
A ball of threads
my prayers
whisper
frightened.
Foolish I's
are choked
without you ever
knowing
what I ask.
The "dont's" and "zeros"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The night
that strangled
the endless moments
I had wished
to live,
passed by
without my lighting up
the candle
I had longed to warm up
all the dont's and zeros.
Ashes
~~~~~
The fireplace
was eager
to put a full stop,
in the sentence
where the road
of my dreams
stuck
upon the word of happiness
with sparkles
of wet logs
I collected
from the inside of me
that I dared
to turn to ashes.
Maybe
~~~~~
The cloud struggled
against the sand
underneath the rain
of "no" and "yes",
forcefully treading
on the rationale
that obeys
the impasse of "maybe".
Limits
~~~~~~
Fragments of glasses
in the empty room
of the inarticulate whispers,
bleed
our limits,
fill
with sores
the caress of our soul.
Ernest Williamson
What of the Cedar Trees
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
there was no lament in the dour Cedar trees
in the corner I was upright like the lives in
Katrina's droning leveling flesh but mystified by the
spirit of resplendent hands holding on to future bonds
with no regard for stocks in residual condonement
but back to the Cedar trees
these two worn 200 year old bodies
showing with no regard for shame its stains
its diaries of exposition for men and women to ignore
and explore
though I see the trees as few may see them
I am no child and wonderment evades the man who evades
the spores of initiation
that high pitched blooming eye loving the trees
but yet not knowing them
at least as I say to know them
The Importance of Liquid Rainbows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mother used cedar-wood window sills
to hang my clothes in Mr. Landall's mansion
2 miles south of Granny's Market
Mr. Rogers and Mr. Milton
would stand on descending concrete steps
singin'
YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
for my brother and me
and though they were pink and old
I never saw any association of discontent in their
words I am a black person
or African American you may say
yet my friends
back then like the smell of sun dried clothes
on the cedar-wood window sills in my room
were mostly of a nice touch
a good smell in my nostrils
a silent smile
fans of universality
and to my surprise
hidden
from the common disdain
of the incivility of 1965.
The Jazz of Old Wine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
life is a disposition dipped in mirth divided by two
annulled in blithe and despair
like our first kiss
in the middle of yesterday's November rain
with fresh pine biting with congealed blue notes while
hissing
in the residue of phony lightning storms
I'd love to hold your story
from tears to triumph in my sheet music
as I wait here on the corner of Hope Street
singing a change gone come
for twenty minutes
inside of twenty long years
and though I long for your utterance
I can still stand here
branded by these watery rainbows
near my shoes
these worn leather brown shoes.
Empty Cup
~~~~~~~~~
we met in Grothel's vineyard
she, as wet wheat in the burrow below the sky
left of the cabbage patches,
loved me without words
I've sustained millions of diluted wounds
in heart and mind
flown from flight to ideas of levity
with wishes coated in real feelings unfelt
a kiss in mind
but lips dry with truth
and yet in Grothel's vineyard
wine gravitated away from my tongue
as if I were a thief of the green
with nothing to grasp, feign, or drink.
Graham Tiler
I DO NOT THANK YOU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I do not thank you
For being so beautiful
Or inventing ways that elude to beauty
I do not thank you
For making me believe
In the honesty of music or the mystery of words.
For tainting the lonely choices of your reward
Or your capacity for truth each moment in the making.
I do not thank you
For the strength of isolation
Or the anonymous governing of love
which stands against all law in nature
and brings men to their knees.
I do not thank you
for laying beside me in the tall hour of the night
each hour consumed in lonely desperation.
I do not thank you
For the stones
Drawn from the banks of a Black River
Presented to me
To mark out in time
Each moment of departure
THE LAST DARK HEART OF CALLING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And I found at last
My own dark heart
Where no one comes to feast
There in that place
There cannot be a love to find in peace
Where no ship sails
No voices sing
Or wings shall raise me high
My angel heart
Once cast aside a river now run dry
Will such a song
A solemn truth
At once remain alone
Or will the aching drift of time
Trace echoes to your throne
Transcending time I draw my breath
And make an honest vow
That this dark heart in future light
Before you it would bow
So can the lingering print of love
Forever pray and bend
Through vicious storms
And swaying seas survive its bitter end
I wish to call to you, dark heart
To bathe and make you proud
For one to raise me up in truth
And trace this holy shroud
For once the holy shrine of love
Is placed upon the soul
There are no walls or prisons built
Or guards that it can hold.
MORE DREAM SINISTER (PART 1)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So now the final silence has fallen. Unfolding, my desert landscape
remains as continually distant as before with iron hands I begin the
process of starvation only feeding on the silent messages that rise from
an imaginary plane crash. The stranger who looks for comfort in a less
terrified face reaches out to me, as if in this future moment I could be
capable of salvation. The needle hits the skin and the small blood
bubbles that only exist in the transient moment of impact slowly rise
and fall across the network of veins, they disappear like silent
skipping stones beneath a less than luxurious porcelain blanket and I
become a misplaced time traveling Jesus failing to register my thoughts
with the newly formed escape committee.
All the trains are empty or are no longer running I foolishly try to
forget your smile, in a world where no one is smiling. A man in a dark
suit sits by the fountain he is reading a newspaper and smoking a
cigarette he is oblivious to my existence beneath the crawling plumes of
smoke from a distance the headline reads ''NO ONE IS FREE''
I buy myself a pair of blue suede shoes so that my feet at least can
pretend to be Elvis I force myself just for a second into pretending to
be someone else, no one recognizes me so I hide myself inside a passing
taxi.
I begin to view the world through a small TV screen, in this world
everything is black and white. Once optimistic I now find the emotional
prefix painfully tiring. I no longer wish to hear the human voice I am
an actor, unrehearsed I continually forget my lines.
There is nothing of interest here; no sense is too defined. The long
arching spread of the summer sun in which so many find their pleasure is
a dictatorial judgmental and unforgiving god, its cosmic reference
points leaving tyrannical fingerprints like tiny chastisements on the
crawling human ants below.
Framed inside this masturbatory culture for me there is no escape but I
refuse your pity or the pity of others
More fragile than time our cracked glass fingers break when pressed
together. Like children we have yet to learn how paralyzed our fears can
make us. There is nowhere more painful than this. The world is
overflowing with suicide notes and sad country songs but all the radios
are broken and no one is listening.
In every hotel room the ghost of a long forgotten murder remains
unresolved. In Every town and city an unsolved crime waits on every
corner. Everyone has a story where there can be no happy ending this is
the place where we are all guilty; I withdraw and decide to hide from a
world of half-truths. As night falls I begin to talk to you from the
claustrophobia of an empty room. I fall into a thousand micro sleeps, in
each one we are taking a car journey through the night and into the
dawn. Through the early morning mist we are caught inside a momentary
grain of gravitational thought, my hand slowly draws itself across the
shadowy outline of your chest and your reassuring smile captures the
eternal moment.
Later we pass an old man he sits silent; emotionless, clearly lost he
realizes that there is nowhere left to run to. His search for knowledge
and for truth always futile is now finally over.
Suddenly an overwhelming nausea surrounds me. My head filling itself
with a never ending series of tortuous images, a flickering newsreel,
its graphic depiction of frailty, the human spirit and its seemingly
ceaseless capacity for cruelty, plays like a video machine endlessly and
permanently stuck on repeat. This is the cinema of the soul and I refuse
the price of admission. The internal struggle continues the days come
and go mostly long and drawn out they mutate into bleak and nameless
weeks, the weeks into a newly discovered and still problematically
dysfunctional 13th month.
I casually name this unrecorded or catalogued month, Tyranny. Of course
it does not exist inside the real world and cannot be seen by the casual
observer. It is a time-line metaphysical hybrid whose signals can only
be received by the chemically dysfunctional the irrational or distant
soul receiver's. As a consequence of this my skin has begun to blister,
small red patches spreading across my upper body bumping into each other
like long lost friends. Without warning I am transported to the 51st
state of atrophy in this place ice and fire become distant cousins
numbing the soul with an unswerving loyalty. I travel through an
invisible time-line of the heart placing myself in a world where there
are no photographs, I advertise to you my life in real-time, the slow
burn at the onset of an autumn sunrise the cold lash of impenetrable
winter light and I no longer wish to be here. But there is no where else
to be, nowhere left to run too. I sit silent emotionless, an old man.
Along the curving lines of a distant road. In the corner of my vision I
catch the distraction of an approaching car, with weary eyes I look up
and see a man and a woman with smiling faces, the man is gently brushing
his hand along the outline of the woman's upper body as they draw
nearer they with an unthinking natural and long rehearsed precision
curve themselves into a sweetly stolen kiss neither of them notice me
and then they are gone, lost forever along the curving lines of a
distant road.
Jim Benz
There is a chair
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is a luxury chair in this poem,
an Eaves lounge chair with matching ottoman,
upholstered in soft black leather
over a seven-ply cherry shell
and die-cast aluminum supports. No trees
were felled and no ore mined
to construct this chair and no hide
was ever stripped from a dead cow
to be fitted and sewn around
the individually upholstered cushions.
It will never be sat in.
The chair is located in a sun-lit
oak-paneled room, on a Persian rug
of modern design by Qolam Hossein
Jabini Khiabani of Tabriz. An aging feline,
who now steps gingerly across the deep red weaves
of the natural pattern, will never piss on this rug
even though she has just now entered the poem.
In this illusory context, she will live forever
and never become incontinent or arthritic
nor will the heart-broken author have to bury her
by a large aspen tree growing on a hill
thick with birch, beside a rustic log cabin
built from unfelled trees. When she eats a young rabbit,
the rabbit will not cry and there will be no blood
staining the intricate silk inlay of the rug.
About to sit in the leather chair,
and rest a back that never aches,
is the author of this poem
who contemplates a meaningless violation
of previously stated poetic assertions
alluding to the imaginary properties
of said chair. The poem, however, does not
end when he sinks into the plush leather
of its cushions, because the particulars of this existence
reside within the poem itself and have nothing
to do with the imagined properties
of a luxury chair or an indulgent man.
Even so, the poem ends quite suddenly.
Jenni
~~~~~
Jim calls my name from across the street
while I'm cleaning the bed of my pick-up.
I cross over. His breath smells whiskey sweet
but its only noon. His eyes are syrup.
He can't stop speaking of Jenni. Too smug
to say something nice, so he says the same
old shit all over again. "It was drugs
or suicide, man, she just wasn’t sane."
Later, I'm in my garage touching her
bike, my tools are still lying on the floor.
It's been two weeks since I called her number
to say the bike was fixed, and nothing more.
She didn't answer because she was dead,
wide-eyed on the tile. This sticks in my head.
Ignis Fatuum
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I walk up the railroad tracks
in the middle
of the day, sometimes
I walk up the railroad
tracks
in the middle of the day.
I took a strange pill
and it just won't go away.
If there's a trestle
I climb it
because it's there,
if it's a trestle, I climb it
because it's there.
When I go and fall
it just don't matter anyway.
I might fly like a bird
through the sky
of my wanderlust
dreams, I might fly like some bird,
a dead guy
in the sky of my dreams.
I just arch my back
and look up, it could be all day
it seems.
Spirit is relation to the relation
Nothing
is serious
but my will (and this is
comical) in the clouds soaked by
sunshine
JERRY VILHOTTI
Storella: "Sticks and Mighty Stones"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This day the guys on Mad Avenue, in The Washington Hill section of
Burywater where the first long ball hitter doing it on a dead ball
before the Great Babe did it with a ball full of steroids, decided they
would play tackle football in "Bigwop's" backyard as the leaves on trees
were turning colors; signaling that soon the World Serious would be done
with and most likely the Bronx Bombers - with the most money to buy the
best players around being three deep in many positions - would be in it
beating most any team that had won the pennant in the senior circuit.
They began throwing the football with all their might; trying to
throw it way over heads so the receiver would have to retrieve the ball
in the street which would make for a few laughs among the ten year old
guys. They were all about the same age as if their parents scattered
about the northeast had fornicated around the same time.
On one throw that went way over Murphy's head that hit Mister
Soupbonee's car lurking in his driveway (his name was fashioned by an
Ellis Island official who could spell about the same as Grandfather
Sibuono) to ricochet out onto the street. The ball was returned by an
eight year old visiting relative.
"Can I play too?"
"You can't! You're a kike. So go fucking back where you came from!"
Elephant Balls Mic Horrigan said as he snatched the ball out of Arnold's
hands.
"Take a walk. Gawk. You ain't one of us!" Fashi said; ready to kick
the kid out of their game with his body - but for Johnny's good leg
acting like a blocker.
Johnny still felt like a stranger on the shore among these people
who had a nasty thing to say about all nationalities - including their
own - throwing words out with their boneless tongues that could break
bones like: "harp", "guinea", "nigger", "polock", "kike" ....
When Johnny had first come to Burywater three years before from The
East Bronx his mother had sent him to Saint Anthony's to get more God in
him; sending his two much older brothers to the public school; believing
even The First Testament God couldn't change them from their stealing
ways but the day Father Shawn (Slimy is it what the kids called him
behind his back) Egan strapped him for talking in class; never trying to
find out the why of it: that the first grader was telling the only
American-Black in the class, Jerry "nig" Walker who would go back to the
big city and eventually become a sociology professor at Bernard Baruch
in lower Manhattan, what the catechism page was after he had asked
Johnny.
Johnny said to his mother the very night that they moved from the
peel-side of town to their one family home - if she sent him to another
catholic school he would renounce his religion and become a Bahai or
anything else that didn't bully little kids.
After their third touchdown with little Arnold scoring one of them
bleeding his way to the goal line, Johnny realized for the very first
time that Jews bled like he did. He was now even more determined to
protect this kid - who the guys on the other team were muttering half-aloud
"killer of Christ" - after their viscous tackles and kicks in the balls by
running interference for him and knocking down all the whiners and screamers
who would become half-men.
Johnny, Arnold and "Polock" won by five touchdowns.
Johnny and Arnold would never see each other again as he would take
the course that another who would become Home Land Security chief when
nearly the whole world hated the Divided States of America being led to
a Fourth World Order by leaders who worshipped power, money and
indifference.
Within a few years Johnny would become hard-tongued too saying in a
harsh whisper, since Richie was insisting his homer was a foul ball
which Johnny denied since the shot would have won the match of wiffle
ball between him and Splunky, to the older kid who had taken him and
Splunky Soupbonee under his wing to play hours of baseball with them;
words Johnny had heard from his mother's mouth that the kid's mother had
had four husbands which in all ways was a mortal sin: "How many fathers
have you had?"
The look on the sixteen year old boy's face with tears streaming
down was something Johnny would never forget. He promised himself he
would not repeat other people's thoughts; instead, he would treat all
others the way he wanted to be treated. Sometimes it worked and often
it did not but that would not stop him from thinking for himself and
trying anyway.
4-9-06
Lynn Strongin
1.
Ambulance
~~~~~~~~~
Big black letters bright as July's lampblack at the stables
but bleakened
"A.m.b.u.l.a.n.c.e." slides spelled backward on the white truck over
the shadow of the big Red Cross covers my body. I drive waiting for my tone
24 hours per day
7 days a week
Ambulance girl It's easier to save a body than a soul:
I became
after years of being a phone operator, during the war.
I come from Little Berm.
Summer is always the Dark Night of the Soul. St John's. Rather be the one
driving
than the one
borne in pale as a lily bedclothes strewn from the night before
when fevers spiked.
Life is a pair of eyes searching
workmen from Folkestone sheathing a steeple
on a horizon in Copenhagen.
chalk-white storks are nesting
in chimney pots, brick filling with early snowfall mirror-thin at dust & dawn.
Many colored
boxcars
turn monotone silvered wood in moon.
A perfect equation?
Grief for grief. Paper smells of ropeburn.
Life stripped of occasion, celebration when one's only son
leaves a message on the answering machine:
"Got married over the weekend."
What is life without celebration?
"Ambulance" words roll forward on white box red cross on its side
spelled backwards
silver deepens an Artesian
well
Amish hymn
A New England halo spins
about a mosaic of a Saint in extremity
amid oranges & lace from the 16th century in Spain.
2.
The valley of the shadow
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
i.
Yea though I walk thru the valley of the shadow summer
its glass & fevers. . .
I smell the grass
count the tremor.
Wind's torch-roar.
The valley itself lightning
self-inflicted wounds
washing off
like earth's crust.
ii.
Yanking
root vegetables caked with sand
beets potatoes a scroll of scallions, onions.
Hot days coming.
The gulley is
waiting to be entered
wood platform for train
The travellers housed in light milk-bright steam
Christening gown
Altos & Sopranos blend in Jubilo finest cladding.
3.
Duvet
~~~~~
We cover our Pennsylvania-Dutch duvet even in August & July.
If body oils
mix
with eiderdown,
feathers
could be harmed.
Direct sex-instruction
was not given
to us as children:
instead we gave each other the buzz, the skinny:
we projected
like a movie:
what could only take place in the bluest darkroom next-in-line to heaven.
4.
Shuttered from Schoolroom & Street
Thread-thin towel of horse in the bathroom
Hot tubs. Burgundy sweaters.
Memories of cafeteria smelling of boiled milk.
Moon in broad daylight:
my own rocket rising
tearing sheets
Everything easy would be hard from now on
everything hard, a song.
In Dark too soon. Spiritual gains.
Baroque Music
Bach & Handel on the old 33 r.p.m.
Early 1860's engravers
translated designs of artists onto boxwood:
I had Pre-Raphelite curls,
my sister had black-blue oriental bangs.
(Let nobody interrupt the story. . .)
Quince-Quiltmaker:
shuttered schoolroom & street exist in pre-memory time:
I know the ecstasy
Being wrapped in thread-thin towel with horse bleached as morning glory at
summer's end.
5.
I saw the whole world in the rearview window
lit:
bridges suspended
old mining towns, silvered, convex tin.
Light grew skinny, shrank:
I was left, (like this evening)
paper & pen darkening the page:
Bone, blood leached The buzz, the skinny on things: air itself
like lace: wheels, whorls.
I continued transcribing
on till cobalt became blackness
then slatboards bleached wheat-white & indigo shone raw with new dawn.
6.
". . .a fine November morning, and the close soon
became alive. . .East, still doing the cicerone, pointed out all the
remarkable characters to Tom as they passed: Osbert, who would throw a
cricket-tball from the little-side ground over the rook trees to the
Doctor's wall; Gray, who had got the Balliol scholarship,. . ." (p. 139 Tom
Brown's Schooldays)
Specificity
~~~~~~~~~~~
i.
when only nurse & heaven will do.
One to turn back sheets neatly
one to console you.
No catchpenny dreamschool.
Tom Brown's Schooldays is by
an Old Boy.
Chalk hills
running parallel with railway:
England.
Cut out
your own pleasure
within walk or home.
Dulce Domum.
Oxfences.
Hedgerow. Timber. Spinney.
Sheep-paths
run on either side
like ruled lines.
ii.
Tom took
rook's
nests.
That's the thing.
What a lottery!
Fate.
Old heads on young shoulders.
The depth of my summer doldrums
lift with light on chalk cliffs of England.
Nurse your pleasant moments as you will.
Your whitewashed bed.
Dreams of the shoeblack boy.
Necessity, when Ambulance girl and Valley of the Shadow dray to sable end.
Melanie Simms
Clouds
~~~~~~
(for Chris)
Clouds become circus clowns
And airplanes, and parades of
Pink tigers and blue elephants.
I watch as rabbits emerge out of magic hats,
And find the edges of Oz,
Where hearts beat to the rhythm
Of a song about rainbows.
This morning the sky is particularly bright
And free of storms,
Only my thunderous applause
Echoes as I lie here.
For a moment I see a crimson throne
Sun-streaked and dazzling,
As though inviting me to sit.
Poetic Psalm
I am the poet laureate
President
Of
Eternal
Truths,
My laurel is a reigning voice
For all humanity,
Demanding delivery
Knowing that soon
"the cock will crow"
And deceptions will be
Unveiled behind the mask
Of the forgotten one.
I am the broken heart,
Hearing
Every
Aspect
Revealed by
Truth;
My instrument beats
Like the rhythm of the
Eternal song,
Sung by the muses,
Music
Unsung
Shares
Excellent
Sources of pain and of fresh
Revelations...like tulips,
Its fragrance inhaled on the first
New morning if your life; its
Heaven-scent breeze of our delicate
Lives entrusted
By the soul of the serious,
The meaning of
Forever,
Its
Fast
Organ
Revealed, its
Entity
Vibrant, its
Existence a
Reality that never ends...traveling beyond the
Expression of the last vowel of your lungs' breath,
Toxic Truth, exhaled, its remainder
The end.
Existence
Not on this earth,
Death the new beginning
Of the new alphabet.
Good Fortune
~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You prompt interesting discussions"
(a fortune cookie from Chinese Garden, Newport, PA)
Breaking the delicate sweet bread of life
My future is ordained and secured.
After a string of Karaoke boyfriends,
A cookie from Chuck's Chinese diner on 4th
Street says,
"You will soon meet the man you will marry."
I wave the slip of gleaming white paper
Like a flag of rescue or surrender,
I never want to leave this table, the table
Of my good fortune.
The waiter arrives, and asks in his Chinese-New York accent,
"More tea, Lady?"
He pours, and the tea flows with the scent
Of orange blossoms and heaven,
He pours another cup, and then another.
Permeated by the aroma of Chinese Duck
And Sweet and Sour chicken, I finally decide to leave.
The waiter returns to clear my table, smiles and says,
"I bring you gift, Lady."
He hands me a box of Chinese Fortune Cookies,
"For you, Lady. One for each day. Please, my gift to you."
I accept it graciously, tip him generously, and drive away.
At home the ticking clock
Reminds me how quickly time is passing,
And I open a cookie. To my surprise it says,
"You will soon meet the man you will marry."
I open another and another and each one says,
"You will soon meet the man you will marry."
The Daes-Eage
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
("He loves me, he loves me not")
Mama, he loves me NOT;
That's what the Daes-Eage says,
I watched as the last
White petal was captured
By the summer wind,
And fell
To the grass below
The beautiful "daes-eage"
Betraying our love in its last final hour.
"He loves me NOT," it whispers.
Oh cruel Chrysanthemum,
To utter such a horrible
Refute!
Shall I call upon Belides?
She knows too well
The heart of camouflage.
Crafty nymph,
Running from adamant Vertemus,
In blossoms of disguise,
If I could, I too would offer
To hide her, if in exchange
She could turn herself for me
Into one white loyal daisy
That whispers
On each fallen petal,
"He loves me."
Colors
~~~~~~
(for Chris)
You color
Purple Wolves
and polka-dotted egrets,
And watch them travel
Under pink satin stars.
You are young,
It doesn't matter
What color the trees are.
If I could,
I would borrow those magical colors of yours,
And shade my world,
White-out this 30 year mortgage,
Its interest defying gravity,
And scribble over worries with
A happy lemon-yellow.
And I would tell you
That you are right, Son,
Nothing really matters
But happy endings and
These big bright colors of life.
A man wearing a grey tie with a black suitcase
Filled with papers that promise to
"Blow my house down,"
Knocks at my door.
When he arrives, my son says,
"Mommy, take my crayon."
I try to tell him it's not enough,
But he doesn't listen, only nods
And draws me a picture
Of a brick house and a skinny toothless wolf;
"See Mommy, he can't hurt you."
All poems copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.
YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2006 by
Klaus J. Gerken.
The official version of this magazine is available on Ygdrasil's
World-Wide Web site http://www.synapse.net/~kgerken. No other
version shall be deemed "authorized" unless downloaded from there.
Distribution is allowed and encouraged as long as the issue is unchanged.
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