Friday Flash 55 ~ Grandma's Attitude Problem

Grandma's Attitude Problem

We didn’t have much

When I was a kid

We had a pot to pee in

But it didn’t have a lid

Grandma was bitsy

but she could crack wise

She told me "Girlie,

Look out for the guys.

Men will use women

Like bankers use money

And women need men

Like an undertaker needs funny."

I've temporarily lowered the high cultural tone of the blog in order to amuse G-Man and the Crew for Friday 55 Flash Fiction 

Cartoon via CSL CartoonStock

P.S. My grandmother was really very nice, except when you got her riled. She was about 5 feet 3, but once chased my 6' tall drunk stepfather down the block with a cast iron skillet. You didn't mess with her, or with us kids.

Just a Thought

Just a Thought

Do you think when you

ignore me

that I cease to exist?

The joke’s on you.

Someday I will.

And you
will still be

wasting all that time

ignoring nothing.

January 2011

Image: Fractal, Cave of the West Witch, Joe Guerin, source link

The Still

The Still

The heads of grain are waving

   under the sickle sun,

     the sun gathered and brought

across the hill to the shed

    hidden
in the deep woods.

A copper pipe above a boiling vat

  where sun dissolves into a heady spirit. 

Siphons tube it drop by drop each drop

and carry it from fire to air

to throat

to float the head.

In the deep woods

  a root wanders out from the trunk

  beneath a mat of leaves of self

       wanders on and joins itself upon the next

'til every tree in the forest is one

and breathes with one breath.

The autumn and the spring rain

is falling, cells growing

 pebbles living under streams of drops,

   seeping into cracks and flowing

   drop by drop each drop

until they are the sea.

Heat and time

  draw forth the drops to puffs

      to chains of vapor

to clouds and fronts and cyclones

   and fog and mist and

rain again.

Two eyes gaze at two others

   mirrored back a thousand times

      and forward ten thousand

eye by eye. Tongue by tongue

a voice is singing in ten languages

   a thousand same songs.

I pick up the instrument

  and you play.

     A baby sleeps a child listens a woman smiles

and an old man sings along

with feathers on perhaps

or a cigar.

Drops distilled of flesh and spirit tubing

  from one life to another

     back far into another drop of being,

forward far and down, dropping down
to where we stand quiet

 waiting to drink.

    October 2010

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

To whom much thanks for featuring me today, and thanks to all who've emailed me, tweeted, or come by to check out the site.

Image: Distillation, by Roxy Paine, photo by Sheila Griffin, courtesy wikimedia commons

Two Moon Haikus

Two Moon Haikus

I.

The moon of summer

flirts with the navy blue sky

behind her lace fan

  

II.

The wind blows too hard

behind the running clouds

for the moon to turn on

January 2011

 

For One Stop Poetry's Monday Poetry Form at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Photo provided by OneStopPoetry

The second haiku has previously appeared in slightly different wording on twitter #haiku

The Winter School

 The Winter School

The incomparable Fireblossom and I have tormented each other over the weekend by writing a collaborative poem. You'll find it posted at her blog, Shay's Word Garden. I include the picture because, despite having nothing to do with winter or schools, it seems to me to portray how our two fey protagonists might look.
Follow this link or the title one to enter Shay's Magical Kingdom, er Word Garden  and see the result of our mutual insanity.


Image: John.William Waterhouse, from Hylas and the Nymphs, wikimedia commons

The Crazy Lady

photo by Danielle Kelly 

The Crazy Lady

She was always sitting on the end of the pier

Smiling, dressed for a party.

Sometimes she wore the red dress and black mantilla

Of a spanish cabaret act, sometimes she looked like a crazy doll

With a painted paper parasol and a blowing silk wrapped hat,

Strapless dress made for nightclub dancing.

Once she wore a cowgirl outfit

With a lasso and Stetson hat but  we never saw her

Dressed for the beach.

It was Coney island; no one cared, but

Ma told us she was crazy, not to talk to her,

And really, we didn’t want to,

We just looked at her as if there were no ocean

No infinite playground of sand before us,

First thing every summer when we came,

Bringing our white city skin, our pails and shovels

And our blanket to wrap up the summer.

Dad was the only one who always

Turned his eyes away, his mouth set in a concrete line.

Our last summer at the beach, while Ma was swimming,

She left the pier, she walked down the boardwalk

Straight to our sandcastle, and stood behind Dad

Like a lost ranee in a purple sari of gauze,

a lipstick dot on her forehead.

She touched his back. Our eyes were round as sand dollars.

He jumped like a fish on the hook, when it fights to get away.

Then he looked at her

Really looked, like he might never stop looking.

The noises of the beach were muffled,

Time and motion slowed to nothing while they stared

As if they were alone on the moon.

Planets could have crashed above them.

The ground could have split.

Then she smiled, she put a raincoat over her

Wild lavender dress, and wiping her forehead,

Turned and walked away.

The next summer we went to the mountains

And rode horses and stayed at a ranch.

But I liked to think that she finally left the beach

Behind and, dressed like anybody’s mother,

Went home to smile for someone else.

January 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday, at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Lapland's Summer

Today I'm turning the page over to my normally invisible technical collaborator on this blog, Petteri Sulonen, who after much urging on my part has agreed to post his translation of a fine poem by the Finnish poet Eino Leino, well known in his homeland but very difficult to find for those of us who are only fluent in  English. This translation does not retain the rhyme of the original Finnish, but it can  still be felt in the strong cadence.

Lapland Landscape with Marsh Cotton, Muonio, Lapland, 2010

In Lapland, all that grows blooms swiftly
earth, grass, barley, and stunted birch
These matters I have often pondered
as I look upon lives of this folk.

Why doth all that is fair with us wither
and that which is glorious die?
Why have we so many madmen?
Why so few who play on a lyre?

Why do our men everywhere fall
like hay – men of hope and men true,
of aspiration, of heart, men all moulder
or break in the midst of their labor?

Elsewhere the gray-haired burn fiery
In the aged shines spirit as the sun.
Here infants are born as dotards
and youths are set for the grave.

And I? Why do these thoughts I ponder?
'Tis of early old age a sign.
Why not obey my blood's order?
Why sigh over fates of men?

There is an answer: Lapland's summer.
Before it the mind grows gray.
So brief is birdsong and pleasure,
and blooming of flowers and joy.

O! birds, white guests of Lapland's summer,
Great aspirations, I bid ye welcome!
O! remain here, make here your nest,
ere ye return to the southern lands!

O! learn your wisdom from swans!
In autumn depart, to return in spring.
Our shores are calm and peaceful
and the flanks of the fells our refuge.

Rustling fly through the air, O swans!
Great acts create, light up the lands!
But when winter you here see departed,
I beg ye, I ask ye: return!

–Eino Leino, 1902. Translated by Petteri Sulonen.

Eino Leino (1878–1926) is one of Finland's greatest authors and poets. He was a man of many faces: a fierce nationalist, journalist, novelist, lyricist, playwright, and bohemian. Perhaps his most enduring work, Helkavirsiä (Whitsongs, Keith Bosley transl.), is a collection of epic verse set in an imaginary, romanticized past, written in strictly traditional Kalevalan form.

Eino Leino was also known for his hard living and the speed and agility of his writing. It is said that he could write anything, if he felt like it. One poem attributed to him has entered Finnish student folklore; it is said to have been composed on a napkin during one of his sodden nights out on the town. It consists entirely of very naughty spoonerisms, and is utterly untranslatable.

A bronze statue of him, by his friend Lauri Leppänen, stands in Esplanadi park in Helsinki, near his old haunts. Close by is a bar named after him. It is likely that both honors would have tickled his fancy.

photograph by petteri sulonen

January Wisdom

January Wisdom

To be fat and fallow

to increase in the decreasing hours of light with

the last sideways glance from summer’s face long gone,

to place around the darkened heart a vast expanse of stillness

and repose where even the molecules slow their spanish dance

in time to the slackening cadence of the dwindling days

while the barren soughing of the desert wind 

teases away fullness and steals its seed

and the floating grey plate of clouds covers a dish of storms

soon to be served up cold and white; to know

small sapient beings in their dens beneath the sand

nonetheless grow fat in husbanded specks and grains

gleaned when the light was consuming the flowers with harmony;

to know that even a builder of flowers should find as much

in the stark empty stalks waving in the frozen light

as in the wild rioting colors and replications of their prime,

as much in the dead fruit of the arrow after the shaft has struck

as in the grace and strength of its arc, the cunning of the bow;

that wide black immensity should speak not of its swallowing,

but of what will eventually emerge;

all this is January wisdom.

January, 1992

Revised January, 2010

Posted for Saturday New Year's Celebration at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Photo : Oklahoma winter grass, 
© joy ann jones