The New Formalist

Five Poems

Jared Carter — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:32:15 +0000

Gone

The five-string banjo that he played

throughout the night

Stands propped against the balustrade,

no one in sight.

At times I thought I halfway sensed

what music meant

To him. But not today. Silence,

like something pent

For years, wells up within this ring

of fretted trees,

While wind explores new fingerings

among the leaves.

Masque

All damask was that world, and you

dimensionless

Within its traceries. Who knew

that to confess

Our sheer adsorption there, our need

to have no depth

But move as shadows that succeed

without a breath

Or lasting shape – who thought that we

would vanish, quite

As morning ends the revelry

that outlasts night?

Suicide

If you would step outside of time

and space, into

That empty realm where no sublime

awaits, to brew

A perfect cup of nothingness –

before you put

It to your lips, do not profess

that this is what

You always wanted. Better: say

it wanted you,

And waited for this special day

until you knew.

Autopsy

Gently, he folded back each thin

slice of her brain,

As though we might find catching in

that weathervane

Some faintly stirring wind – might deep

within that pool

Of silence still engage a sleep

beyond the rule

Of reason. “No,” he said, and laid

his scalpel there

Beside the slab. “This is mere shade,

not beauty bare.”

Stars

Initially it was not poems

I hoped to write,

But memories – of faces, homes,

that still seemed bright

Though unbelievably distant.

There is no way,

A voice replied. Discrete events

quickly decay;

A star that once gave off a spark

transmutes to lead.

Your own life streaks into the dark.

Write poems instead.

Five Poems

Ralph Sneeden — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 14:13:12 +0000

Elegy: Late August, Ipswich Bay

“Would now the wind but had a body”

—Melville

Resign yourself, abandon other plans

when sailing; address distance by abandoning time.

Forget what you want to reach in order to arrive.

Forty years ago when he was alive,

we crossed the sound to camp here, sublime

until resigning ourselves, abandoning plans

when mosquitoes drove us from our tarp, the chance

to sleep to the rocking mast, its muted chime,

to forget. What we wanted: to reach. In order to arrive,

we’d tacked the estuary only to tack the sands,

walking the night, pivoting every time

we resigned ourselves to abandon our plans

of reaching the point, retracing our trail’s scents

of camphor, canvas, woodsmoke’s lazy climb,

forgetting what it wanted to reach in order to arrive

across the moon, whose light darkened our prints

with shadows enough to follow. Comfortable with the crime

of resigning ourselves, abandoning other plans,

we forgot what we wanted: to reach in order to arrive.

To a Friend with Parkinson’s

Between us on the truck’s front seat your trumpet

jounced as we drove along the beach to fish.

You hadn’t told me the tank was almost empty.

Had you forgotten your pills, too? Empty

buckets clattered in the bed, demanding fish.

Between us on the truck’s front seat, your trumpet

seemed an unwanted passenger. Practicing the trumpet

was fine in traffic; here, you’d scare the fish.

Before you’d told me the tank was almost empty

we fished for hours, almost came up empty

handed. But we made it home, one fish

between us, on the truck’s front seat your trumpet.

You hadn’t told me. The tank was almost empty.

Clandeboye Estate, County Down

The Californian cypress grows monstrous

in Irish rain. Magnolia and pear conspire

for sun, one’s blossoms in the other’s branches,

while apples –dwarfed– are trained to follow wire,

the fruit like all that weaponry mounted on mesh.

Paddle-blades (and skis) right up there in

among the arrows, rapiers honed fresh

for skewering, the odd Icelandic violin

which came to mind that evening in the pub,

as fingers fretted, stopped the whistles, stirred

the bodhrán’s palm-tuned skin, subtle rub

of elbows, bows’ interplay. The world’s blur:

mace as censer, blooming fans of bayonets,

resurrected bee house, perennial graves of pets.

Shipyard Aubade

In memory of Marcia Carlisle

Everything evicted or planning escape.

The green water antiseptic, colder now–

if that’s possible. Without a means of getting

out there to the boat you have to swim,

October having culled the settlement to make

an example of the stubborn decks desecrated

by gulls’ graffiti, devastated crabs. Always

risky to tempt this season, its barreling storms,

for one more shot at skirting the bay, unfurling

a sail to smother the marshes’ threats of arson,

tide nipping the lug bolts of your trailer

on the beach, smug foresight of the empty

moorings, pert ribbons of their little wakes,

the current you thrash against. To let your body

pass, menhaden schooling in orderly panic

adjust the contours of their brilliant cause.

House After Children Have Left For College

We live in a country that has forgotten

the origins of its cuisine, have taken

for granted the delicacies and everyday

miracles of the put by derived from

frugality, a time of war: competing

subwoofers, tinny bathroom radio,

slamming closets, laughter in the dead

of night, hair dryers, water

flushed and bickering through the walls.

On our dresser, a canted photo

of the Pacific coast: fog, driftwood

ramparts dwarfing the crouched adolescents.

From where had it come that salt-whittled

lumber, featureless totems of submission,

experience? Another dynamic season,

most likely, borne from far

away at great expense, heaped

against the bluffs like spears at the gates

of a city evacuated, craving decimation.

Four Poems

Stephen S. Power — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:30:23 +0000

The Screech of Gulls

Tarawa, 23 November 1943

Three days of battle leave a brutal lull.

As rot relieves the smoke—and spades, the rot—

we brace ourselves to face a screech of gulls.

They burst on Red Beach 3 like flak to cull

the choicest meats and eat them dripping hot.

No battle was more brutal than this lull.

They squabble as they scrape at bones and skulls.

Their ash-white bellies turn to bandage blots.

Some slick-sleeve private screeches at the gulls.

A corpsman says, This is unnatural.

Given the circumstances, I think not.

Too many days of battle feed this lull.

We kill the bastards by the barrelful.

They send reserves to shred those we had shot.

At least our fire drowns out the screech of gulls.

Worst is the way they stare at us, eyes dull

as rounds and no more careless of our lot.

When will the battle end this brutal lull

and bring me men, not screeching, gorging gulls?

The Emperor of Mexico

Querétaro, Mexico, 19 June 1867

They bring him to the Hill of Bells,

his hands untied,

his floppy hat held loosely at his side,

behind his two most trusted generals.

To one he offers soothing words;

the other, his place in the center.

He tips the firing squad, then he defers

to the captain so their justice can be rendered.

He is the Emperor of Mexico,

and he would die as he has lived: composed.

Of course he thinks them thankless fools.

He still believes

this mob will never know democracy

unless they have a knowing king to rule.

He should condemn the monarchists

for not accepting his reforms

except the Liberals always gave the fist

to all he did to stave off civil war.

He is the Emperor of Mexico,

and he would die as he has lived: opposed.

Slowly the captain lifts his sword;

the squad, their guns.

He tells himself, You had the chance to run,

but unlike peasants, kings must stay their course.

Napoleon recalled his troops;

he would not deign to follow them.

The city under siege, he would not stoop

to leave off hope and leave his last, best men.

He is the Emperor of Mexico,

and he would die before he lived deposed.

In all he has just one regret.

His broken wife

had begged the Continent to save his life.

Such risks, wives fail to see, kings must accept.

The squad takes aim, and he takes heart.

He will be judged by history,

and once these rebels tear his state apart,

they will regret their misspent loyalty.

He is the Emperor of Mexico,

and, waiting, cries out, "Viva Mexico!"

A Turkish Fairy Tale

The Syrian Desert, July 1915

Maybe it happened, maybe not:

Thousands of women dragged from home,

expecting to be stabbed or shot,

but forced instead to build a road,

their corpses used for cobblestones.

The soldiers drove them through their thirst

and wastes of weariness and, worst,

only the rapes broke up the days

until each lay in untilled dirt,

another bit of desert paved.

Or they, according to the Turks,

deserted husbands, vainly searched

for better lives and simply got

what wayward wives know they deserve.

Maybe it happened, maybe not.

The Yankee Jacket

Boston, 16 December 1773

John Malcolm, customs agent for the Crown—

we brace ourselves to face a screech of gulls.

which really means the Company—

we brace ourselves to face a screech of gulls.

fears for his skin at the first sound

of natives stomping towards the quay:

the Sons of Drunken Liberty.

Given his duties, he has worn

a Yankee jacket once before,

a garment that his salary

will not let him again afford.

He has no shares in any colonies.

Hiding behind a cart, he sees the crowd

relieve three ships of all their tea,

dozens of crates, hundreds of pounds

worth thousands to the Company,

an act too brazen to believe.

Despite their talk, he would have sworn

they simply would have charged aboard

and brayed till they were forced to flee.

The Company expects no more

from those with no shares in the colonies.

“That rage,” he thinks, “that will, they won’t be bound,

but if I’m found, Christ, I might be.

They’ll toss me with those crates to drown.”

He cranes his neck, tries hard to breathe

and looks for some way off the quay.

The crowd breaks into separate swarms,

which briefly lets an alley form,

his only chance to reach the street.

He bolts. Some howl. Some point. All storm

the man, the least share due the colonies.

He shrieks and struggles as his clothes are torn

away and he is lapped with scorn.

He tastes the pitch pots’ smoke and reek.

Everyone snorts as Malcolm warns,

“The fate you’ll share with all the colonies!”

Five Poems

Ed Coletti — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 10:28:36 +0000

Triolet On Time

For boys add to their woe by sitting still

Was the best line of my youthful poem.

Now age and illness ask again why will

Such boys add to their woe by sitting still?

You’d think of this they’d had their awful fill

And, dreaming dreams of life they’d finally sow them.

For boys add to their woe by sitting still

Was the best line of my youthful poem.

A Poem Changes In the Night

Yesterday, a line I based

at rest among other desert

impressions lying still well placed.

Although it was but barren waste

simply sand not even dirt

there yesterday a line I based.

Morning rose with me, I raced

to find my sleeping line to bless her

impression lying still well placed

An all too vivid sun’d erased

from where in my poetry’s best worth

yesterday a line I based.

Grinning greenly without taste,

a leafy valley hussy’s mirth,

impression lying, still well placed?

No more, and she will dominate

and raise forbidden secret hurt

where yesterday a line I based

resting in a quiet desert.

For Stan Getz

Where the Volga flows

your sweet tenor woes

your Stan Getzness

never forgets us

with this Russian rose.

Sets my soul aflame

no matter your acclaim,

riffing riffing always riffing

whatever's done is now forgiven,

Sonia was her name.

Your horn’s eternal cries

make me fantasize,

what a tender bride

what a frantic ride,

her dark flashing eyes

Those eyes that hypnotize

those deep Brazilian sighs

Orfeo seeks his stolen love

peace has lost its moaning dove,

Discover her before love dies.

Nothing Of Value

Throw away a jar of pennies,

This is very good advice.

Then nickels, dimes and quarters

Worth little more than lice.

In the soul’s progression

Such ridiculous device

As a coin, a dollar or a million,

Clocks and clothes and mice,

Nothing lasts forever,

And ever’s worth the price.

Miss Wild Power, She Of Octobers Through Decembers

From the day she came in glasses to his office

primly dressed with light brown gabardine,

spectacles were measure of all beauty,

intellect the mark most feminine.

True, some stars have fallen from the heavens.

species have evolved from lower forms.

Doughnut holes are full of anti-matter.

Literary monsters breathe new storms.

Canticles to darkness swell his evenings

thick with turtle soup and burgundy.

Hidden gardens droop behind dutch doorways.

A red-winged blackbird flees its balcony.

Brown November weekends were the rule then

whether it was Fall or in the Spring

when wishes turned again to expectations

as leaves somewhere between the ground and wing.

Yet when a dimpled smile slides her glasses

careening like a sleigh ride down her nose,

reindeer charge and Santa cockeyed dashes

through the open door on tipsy toes.

Wild Power is the name she’s known by

all the time she’s with him and without.

Flowers grace his navel; I don’t know why

grapes hang sweet and bitter from his mouth.

Shared and warmer times beyond his winter

might extend as doves on quiet snow

wander blindly bump and scratch a hint of

what birds seek but still can barely know.

Caravans of snow geese wedged on journey

flow to Season B and back again.

Bobolink and sparrow join in melee.

Hummingbird lures rooster from its hen.

Friends and lovers dawdle day and night in

words like bread or cheese the poet’s feast.

Poetry means nothing but the writing

not unlike the flowers, grapes and geese.

Born of magic spells in secret covens

the siren in his evening song enchants

poetry with nightingales and ravens;

her Cabernet he carefully decants.

Where in all of this are rhyme or reason?

Neither one is crucial, I suppose.

I used the former solely for this season,

left the other stewing in repose.

Tragic plays portray all lovers cower

underneath black skirts of nature’s law.

comedies are he and Wild Power

debating truths abstruse as Santa Claus.

Dusk and dawn are one by deep December;

each instant is a picket to the fence

(holding back the children of November)

engaging me to sing in present tense.

Four Poems

Kathryn Jacobs — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:01:49 +0000

Promises

We cuddle, and I feel you worrying;
you think I'm fragile. But you're safe with me,
or safe as caring can be. I won't lie:

we lose people. And love keeps happening.
You never raised a son from infancy
and watched him disappear; you're just a guy

who spent your early years adventuring.
So this is new, and we get used to free
until it stops. And when you said “goodbye”

you said it first. And you can count on me
to love you back, but all the worrying
on earth won't make forever. And I'd lie

except I'm past that; all I'll guarantee
is that I'd never hurt you carelessly.

Traffic Jam

The lanes peeled off like band-aids, asphalt coiled
in cast-off curlicues. You should have seen
how shocked those drivers were, stuck upside down
like flabbergasted flies with metal skin.
They were just features of the exit lane

till “something happened” (world gone literal)
and they 'peeled off' in earnest. As for us:
we rubbernecked, took out our cell phones (“snap”)
and messaged (“stuck in traffic, literally”,)
but no one not-there noticed. Entrances
smoothed down adhesively in seamless strips
(a giant, crisscross bandage); they said “merge” –

but it was difficult. Discarded lanes
like tins of anchovies with missing keys
had folded pickup trucks and wrinkled beds,

while underneath the ripped-up Georgia clay
gaped open to the sky like ripple-skin
too sensitive to touch. We got away:

“Yes sir, I'm late this morning. Traffic” (shrug).

Three Wishes

On certain days the stained-glass butterfly
gets stuck between lead strips. And on those days
(if you should try to fix it) you'll find mud
inside what should be beer. Luck has a way
of hiding pots of gold in bars of lead.

I rhapsodize with poets dead and gone
by wrestling with a chubby leprechaun.

An artisan of stained-glass window blue
can replicate Madonnas without end.

And that might be enough for common days.

But if you want to see the world askew
you'll squat and clutch that mischief-minded man
until he takes you dancing with the fey:
the time for artistry has come and gone.

I'm wrestling with a chubby leprechaun.

SNAP

A green-and-yellow marsh-meadow, with frogs
erupting happily in high pitched squeals
at not-quite-warm, but soon. A little mist –
along the edges, mostly; just enough
to blur the boundaries, which were softening
like patient cream cheese. And because of this,
a camera man with tripod, waiting for
the perfect picture. Arcs of colored light

the wet caught, rising: that was part of it.
And then the backdrop: plunging mountain sheers
with huddled snow-spots. But it helped, I think,
when something heavy moved the puddled grass
and startled the abruptly silent frogs:
a gap within the grasses, breath held: SNAP.

Near and Far: The Teratogen Sonnet Series

Norman Ball — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 04:01:45 +0000

“The death camps were not built in the Gobi Desert. And when barbarism challenged, the humanities, the arts, philosophic thought proved not only largely impotent but often collaborative with despotism and massacre,”

–George Steiner, from ‘A New Literacy’, The Kenyon Review, 24:1, Winter 2007, 10-24

To date culture has been a broad disappointment. However our new up-close planet beckons with both peril and promise brought about by advances in human proximity. Evil works best in the shadows. Should a mass awakening break out, culture and its potential for edification may yet serve as a prototype for meaningful civilization. Such an awakening would belie centuries of stony sleep. But it could happen.

The oldest cave art dates back over 30,000 years. So the arc of human culture easily eclipses the totality of human civilization. Practically all things human happened on culture’s watch. Culture has been impotent against the inhuman aspects of human community, maybe even as Steiner suggests actively collaborative. But grassroots proximity is relatively new. Plane travel and commerce have nibbled at the edges of collapsing distance. But the Internet could be a cultural epoch-maker in the sense of advancing the former’s long-sought promise by out-dazzling —with light, speed and ubiquity— the many tedious and banal campaigns that have traditionally typified evildoing.

This then is the progressive manifesto, with a technologist’s bent, put forward by an admittedly darkened heart. In truth I am, like Steiner, rather sanguine on our prospects altogether. The race to annihilate one another, at ever more vast distances, is still in full-swing aided, much like the nearness movement, by some deadly new toys. Evil is a coward. Intimacy requires courage. We are in a pitched battle between the drone and the webcam. Which will win?

One particularly lurid setback came recently for me from a group of photos that I have frankly been unable to erase from my memory banks ever since, those of Afghan and Iraqi babies who, it is alleged, suffered horrendous birth defects as a result of weaponized depleted uranium. I call the sonnets (mini-exorcisms?) that resulted, The Teratogen Series.

According to dictionary.com a teratogen is “a drug or other substance capable of interfering with the development of a fetus, causing birth defects.” Some of the babies I review here may have been dead on arrival. I cannot say. There are also intimations on the Internet that some of these gruesome deformities are not the result of uranium at all, but perhaps abortions and other unrelated defects. Frankly this sort of rearguard polemic affords me small comfort. The fact that these deformities are, in all likelihood, the result of some human-induced predations, either on the environment or on ourselves, is cause enough to shrink back in reflexive shame, before an us-versus-them mentality is allowed to poison the well yet again.

I confess also to being sickened by my complicity, my ‘tax dollars at work’, etc. on what amounts to a well-funded island for Dr. Moreau. Why haven’t I put down the pen and taken up a sword against the Black Iron Prison? I question as well my inclination to drum these tiny monstrosities through yet further exploitations. Come admire my gratuitous trespasses, all neatly metered and rhymed!

I can only address the process as it came over me. In the manner of slowing down to observe a gruesome freeway accident, I found each sonnet gradually falling under the discrete orbit of one picture and one baby. (Note: Due to the graphic nature of the pictures, The New Formalist provides a separate link where they can be viewed.) The overtly ekphrastic nature of this sequence was thus evolutionary and not conscious.

These sonnets deliver me beyond the extremities of my own comprehension. I can’t help feeling we have finally drilled beneath some tabooed substrate. The pictures repel me. I resort at times to black humor in an effort to disarm the already-disarmed. Humor blunts despair. You have to chuckle a bit at these un-embraceable little ewes or go crazy considering the sheer improbability of their existence. My sense of disgust, I am sorry to report, at times exceeds my sense of compassion. I suggest my inhuman reaction may be a human response that seeks to acknowledge our post-human nexus—or is that too many humans in one independent clause?

There is an implicit Rubicon here. I am aware of viewing these pictures and reacting to them from the crossed side. Am I too retreating into the distance? No longer content to do endless doughnuts in the parking lot, the World Uroborus is making a last supper of its tail. The circle has been broken, by and by, Lord. We await now the moon falling out of the sky and the tides’ apocalyptic cessation. One wonders, how much more end we will be asked to endure? There is no getting back behind the horror of these malformed conceptions. We inhabit a brave new world. Why? I believe because we were not brave enough to avert it.

Teratogen 1: Sex on the Brain

“Thy nakedness shall be uncovered,

yea, thy shame shall be seen…”—Isaiah 47:3

This mission is a sin. What kind of spaz-

tic draws vigor from pornographic veins

or penis-headed parodies of ass?

But you're no baby, Baby. Holy weans

alive, I could not diaper your fine mess.

You soil all metaphor. I'll author blame:

My labs, my country tis of thee. My shame

is writ uncovered on your face. No less

you'd scare Sears' portrait guy.

And yet I'm drawn

to parse the prick that promenades your head.

They warned us, Horus, Set, the Golden Dawn:

a Third Eye—neither naked, neither dead

of shameless form would, near the end, arrive

cursing those whose fear brought it alive.

Teratogen 2: Cabbage Patch Moll

"Hence world picture, when understood

essentially, does not mean a picture of the

world but the world conceived and grasped

as picture." –Martin Heidegger

You vandalize distress at no small cost

through nylon skein and cabbage patch

disguise. This manhunt though is long since lost.

All have been found. First paparazzi snatched

unguarded moments. Then we watched gray puffs

televise precision. Your face

is pixelated aftermath that stuffs

everything in the close-up. Common place

covers all bases. Where’s the intimate

to hide? The convict is a partial judge

on all subjects of visual merit. Split

my screen and your forehead suggests a smudge-

print. We share the mounting headcount’s ripe bruise.

For I no longer feel eyewitness news.

Teratogen 3: Thumbelina, Dance

We vet foot bills. Are pissed-on borders worth

a mongrel birth? doG gone us Pentagon.

Hotdog Girl rolls so we might rule the earth?

Our barking men of outrage are all gone.

Lassie’s come home to her unleashing hour.

Stream? I cannot stream out into the streets.

Fluoride neutered all my upright power.

I’ll litter no more dog-days in these sheets.

Poor pup, you play dead well. No, we’ll not lift

you up. One burp and you could well explode

across complicit shoulders. To the swift

life opens up. As for an honest road

with cars to chase, let’s first define your legs.

Right now you are a thumb. How motion begs.

Teratogen 4: Waterboy

Suffer this baby floating on the earth

amphibious. Grace alone can mend

fluidic pustules. Please make haste. No berth

so wide of God, nor time-belabored End-

time should deflate ascent. Prospects look grim

for due speed. He must tire of boils and sore

feelings.

Procrastinating seraphim,

whitewash no more. There's too much to restore.

All dirigibles must rise. Christ draws nigh.

Please hear, oh Lord, the water-boy’s bleak cry

whose isotopic lungs cannot advance

beyond collapse. How does he stand a chance

of reaching Heaven waterlogged on Earth?

Our New Disorder liquefied his birth.

Teratogen 5: Burpee Girl

Christian soldier, you battle your mortgage

with Abd al-Chuckee puppet-strings away,

sculpted like a Mujaheedin porridge

from amber waves of O, so gamma ray.

Our acronym-cadavers cyphered this.

The Pentagon got wind of ill-wind skies.

Re-baseline victory. All vectors miss

these eyesores too contained to leak out cries.

Children! Don’t play! The cradle robs the grave

before the grave has time to rob your wild

unripened stare. Uranium defiled

His altered mud. God’s breath, we henceforth waive.

Dead verse tomatoes horror. Who’ll baptize

the Burpee Girl with ovulating eyes?

Teratogen 6: Improvised Existential Denouement (IED)

Up close you could be anybody's child-

care scandal. Hamburger Hill limps beside

your fresh pink meat. While no one looked, life

filed

your backstroke down to blisters. They will hide

your books in study hall. Who will arrest

this mutant form now terrorizing cells?

Without a clear and sewn-up threat the West

cannot hold the line. Deformity spells

doom. No tight-knit group of key advisors

props up your bloated puppet-string regime.

Sit up. Exude malevolence. Your sores

must find themselves else war will lose its steam

pressed irony. Don't make us make Big Macs.

Cater our events. Weather our attacks.

Teratogen 7: Baby Skeletor (Brought to You by Masters of the Universe )

Before ill-winds impinged on faultless weather,

I had a barrow glazed with rain for you.

I'd wheel you to the bus-stop, but why lever

a father's guilt atop your unhinged glue?

I’m loath to hold you up for God to see,

nor shower you with blue comforts. Why not flee

my too-short arms, your wails so out of key?

You scream small monster none the least at me.

I'll prop you up at school if you insist.

But upright kids are cruel. They will resist

the womb's last weapon, shrunken in their midst.

The universe is cruel. You are the grist

for chemistry swept under Mattel ® rug,

a Hazmat spill, the morning-after drug.

(Note: Due to the graphic nature of the pictures, The New Formalist provides a separate [YouTube link below] where they can be viewed.)

Five Poems

Michael Curtis — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 18:54:12 +0000

Spes

Kalends; August 1

Things are bad now? Trust me: They will be worse.

On the faithful day the arch was finished,

I was asked to speak the rite, make the wish

Of happy hope, but when I read the verse

For Vestus Spes the ambitious transverse

Arch collapsed on Priestess Hope: She was squished

Flat. Well, then my verse of hope was stale fish

And I was blamed for squashing Hope, accursed

By day’s end. I was battered to confess,

And confessed, as who would not. My fault. Oops.

The hopeless part? Itching while restrained. Nope,

Couldn’t scratch and still cannot in this blessed

Wall of Spes’ squeezed in Santa Nicola

Where I am stuck, a spackled scagliola.

Aeolist

An ancient stranger handed me the leaves

And turned away and slipped into the mist.

On the leaves in slanted Latin were twisted

Letters resisting when I tried to read

Them. I persisted and I could believe

That low whispers rose from the wrinkled list

Of prophesies. “Shush!” I said. It insisted,

Whispering nonsense. I was not deceived,

This was the real thing and it was trouble.

Damned stranger, she didn’t want them either.

Wrinkled old Sibyl, floating on the ether;

Ouu, “I want to die. I want to die.” double

Tongued witch. Now I am stuck with this old rot when

I thought the cursed things were burned by Christians.

Matches

The Pope in Rome can draft a prayer;

John Russell Pope can draw a dome;

The poet Pope can pen a pun;

I hope to style a smart affair

With Liza of the flaming hair.

That girl whose quick ideas run

Quite naked through a hippodrome

Engraved in pictures fine and rare.

O, I have seen her skipping through

Egyptian temples—clever minx,

I’ve seen her smile back at the sphinx

And wink. Ah…the sphinx winked, too.

Who wouldn’t craft a cunning ayre

To win the girl of flaming hair?

Vertumnus

Ides; August 13

Old jackal, he will talk with anyone,

As can be seen in his statue.

You’ll see, he will talk with you.

But beware, he’s a trickster, full of fun

And always changing. The God of seasons,

Growing gardens, cherries too.

You know Pomona? No? Who

Was she? Just a bud that he forced up. Dun

Got her unawares. She was a pretty

Thing, ripe and luscious, sweet rose

Lipped, like you dear. He knows…

I shouldn’t tell. I should tell? You will see

That worn old stone blossom with a kiss. Yes,

The God’s garden grows on a kiss. Like this.

Megalesia

I Nones—IV Ides, April 4-10

Your Great Mom pebble head’s

A cheap Greek trick:

Slick politics;

Nasty, slutty maenads;

Phrygian knuckleheads;

Limp dick eunuch,

Ball-less prick

I dare ya, go ahead,

Beg for another obal,

See what ya get.

State funds? Yet,

Girly, ya got no balls.

Go home, Galli. Foreign

Radical, unRoman.

Five Poems

Damian Balassone — Tue, 01 May 2012 04:01:19 +0000

The Sleeper

The kids are rolling on the grass,

the sun is sinking low,

but look! a man is sound asleep

beside a lurking crow.

His white-grey hair conceals his eyes,

but not his wrinkled face,

slouched upon an old park chair,

detached from time and space.

His slumber is his sanctuary;

he is not made for this world

of lingering from nine to five,

collecting earthly pearls.

It’s those who can’t enjoy their sleep

who lives are plagued by strife,

if you don’t enjoy your sleep

you won’t enjoy your life.

Dream on sleeper, you will fly

to mountains, rivers, canyons,

who gives a stuff what people think:

if you can’t be there, imagine.

The Young Man at the Bus Stop

The young man found the crowded stop

in flannelette and mustard cap,

the bus would take him to the crop

where he would meet the working chaps.

Just yesterday he finished school,

the day before he felt the cane,

his father labelled him the fool

and said that he deserved the pain.

But school was now a distant star

and Rosa’s face, a teary blur,

and loneliness became his scar

whenever he remembered her.

And still the bus stop crowded more,

the expectation filled the air,

the rumbling sound, the flapping door,

the coldness of the driver’s stare.

The young man stomped his cigarette

and made his way towards the queue,

a widow brushed his flannelette

and scampered for her window view.

And on the bus he saw a seat

beside a slick-haired businessman,

who spread his arms and stretched his feet,

deterred, the youngster chose to stand.

The morning sun was on the rise,

it peeked above the distant hills,

the driver shut his weary eyes,

awaiting for the bus to fill.

And when it filled, the engine roared—

the bus let out a grieving cry;

the young man dreamt of days before,

and here he knew his youth had died.

But school was now a distant star,

and Rosa’s face, a teary blur,

and loneliness became his scar

whenever he remembered her.

Dandaloo

From the humble Murrumbeena,

past the ever-flowing Yarra,

through parades of autumn Moomba,

he aspired to golden sands.

Rode the waves of Gunnamatta,

dreamt of golden Coolangatta,

wooed the girls of Wangaratta,

in this Anglo-Saxon land.

Left his darling in Yallambie,

watched the sunset at Kilcunda,

netted prawns in Mallacoota,

travelled west towards alpines.

Pinched tobacco in Porepunkah,

fought the flames in Yackandandah,

caught the view from Kosciusko,

on his way to Jindabyne.

Cruised the curling Murrumbidgee,

stoned the crows of Wagga Wagga,

heard the mocking kookaburra––

which he did not understand.

Passed the swamps of Cootamundra,

climbed the mountains of Katoomba,

paced the fields of Goondiwindi,

in this Anglo-Saxon land.

Saw the lofty peaks, Kuranda,

swooping currawongs of Daintree,

blushed at stories of the yowie,

hitched a ride to Kakadu.

Stood in wonder by Nourlangie,

fished for giant Barramundi,

crossed the gorges and the deserts

till he came to Ningaloo.

Fled the ghost towns of Kalgoorlie,

trespassed through the Maralinga,

took a breather in Barossa,

and a well-earned sip of wine.

Stomped the grapes of Coonawarra,

chased a pigskin in Dimboola,

gathered apples in Mildura––

his life a pantomime.

Swam the waters of Echuca,

paddled-steamed to Yarrawonga,

stretched the boundaries of Wodonga,

here the boy became a man.

Dreamt of darling in Yallambie,

headed home to Murrumbeena,

past the ever-flowing Yarra

in this Anglo-Saxon land.

Byron Loved the Sea

Wordsworth loved his twilight lakes,

Yeats the wild duck and the drake,

Lawrence glorified the snake,

Churchill loved his V;

Keats composed seraphic odes,

Frost preferred untrodden roads,

Larkin spoke of awful toads,

but Byron loved the sea.

To some, Rimbaud provides the thrill,

or Baudelaire at vaudeville,

or Blake and his Satanic mills,

or Dylan’s haunted trees;

or Teddy Hughes’ creepy crows,

or Sylvia’s cataclysmic woes,

or Robert Burns’s red, red rose,

but I like Byron’s sea.

Tennyson penned dedications,

Pope perfected rhymed quotations,

Shelley praised the cloud’s formation,

Poe loved Annie Lee;

Whitman loved his leaves and moss,

Coleridge the albatross,

Ezra couldn’t give a toss,

but Byron loved the sea.

≈

Have you heard him praise the sea?

the image of eternity,

the life-force in the soothing breeze,

oh how Byron loved the sea!

And how that lame boy loved to dwell

where pounding white-foam breakers swelled,

and the story he most loved to tell

was how he swum the Dardanelles.

Song of a Deaf Poet

When you see me all alone,

I hope you understand

that though my ears don’t hear a thing

the spirit rules the man,

and the harp of David dwells in me,

his strum is my command,

though ostracised from crowded rooms,

I dance on desert sands.

The Crowning of the Blessed Virgin with a Wreath

Marcy Jarvis — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Mother Mary greets us on May Morning.

Mourning not, she smiles to see us come.

Coming with a basket of blue glory,

Glory unto her; May is her month.

He Answered Me

Marcy Jarvis — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:40:30 +0000

He answered me! My grain ran straight away

through me into my lower half; I felt

my hips receive his message and my back

relax into my seat as if a belt

were holding all this sifted sand aloft

inside my breast, inside my brain till this:

He answered me and turned me upside down

and left my top a vacant hourglass.