Naked

Naked

A Pantoum

When you’ve made a three piece suit from your fear

it’s hard to learn to go naked.

When you’ve screamed so loud stones can hear

its hard to admit that you faked it.

It’s hard to learn to go naked

when you weave your own lies at the loom.

It’s hard to admit that you faked it

when you love your own prophecy of doom.

When you weave your own lies at the loom

your tongue wears them often and well.

When you’ve written your bible of doom

you have to keep preaching the sell.

Your tongue wears it all often and well

because truth has become too complex.

You have to keep preaching the sell

since it has what you want to come next.

Your mind will forget how to flex

and the soul will forget how to see,

because it’s all about special effects

making horseshit of reality.

The soul will forget how to see

when you’ve cried wolf so loud stones can hear.

You’ve beggared reality

when you make a three piece suit from your fear.

September 2011

Posted better late than never for   FormForAll   at dVerse Poets Pub

where Gay Cannon does an informative and impossible to resist exposition on the Malay poetry form known as the pantoum. It's a cascading form which uses repeating phrases, and you can find the full definition laid out clearly and succinctly with examples, including a great pic of Baudelaire with a cigar, at the link above.

(I've taken a few liberties with not reproducing the repeating lines word for word.)

Friday Flash 55 ~ Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance:

noun, Psychology.
anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs...~dictionary.com

I don't know how many other people were bored or desperate enough to watch the Republican Debate last night, but the words above are the only ones that come to mind to describe the proposals I was hearing. I've taken an excerpt from the debate transcript and highlighted my 55 words--stranger than any fiction, and I include the others so they make sense--I hope you know I have edited them like crazy to get two simple statements from a politician in only 55 words. Anyway, the two statements offered illustrate the term above, in my opinion, about as perfectly as possible. 

Note: No offense to any sane people who may hold different views than my own is intended.

The words in bold are my 55.

Posted for  Friday Flash 55  at the G-Man's

Taken directly from the transcript of the Republican Debate at the Reagan Library, September 8, 2011

MODERATOR: Governor Perry, you clearly don't like the Massachusetts [health care]plan as an example for other states, but Massachusetts has nearly universal health insurance. It's first in the country. In Texas, about a quarter of the people don't have health insurance. That's 50 out of 50, dead last. Sir, it's pretty hard to defend dead last

PERRY: Well, I'll tell you what the people in the state of Texas don't want: They don't want a health care plan like what Governor Romney put in place in Massachusetts...What they would like to see is the federal government get out of their business.....My wife is a nurse. And I'll promise you, we understand that if we can get the federal government out of our business in the states when it comes to health care, we'll come up with ways to deliver more health care to more people cheaper...

LATER...

MODERATOR:Governor, I'd like to ask you, border state governor, what specifically, in your mind, would make the border secure?

PERRY:  Well, the first thing you need to do is have boots on the ground. We've had a request in to this administration ..since June -- or January of 2009 for 1,000 border patrol agents..or National Guard troops, and working towards 3,000 border patrol. That's just on the Texas border.

There's another 50 percent more for the entire Mexican border. So you can secure the border, but it requires a commitment of the federal government of putting those boots on the ground, the aviation assets in the air. We think predator drones could be flown, that real-time information coming down to the local and the state and the federal law enforcement. And you can secure the border.

As Governor of Texas, Rick Perry has:

• Said Texas should have the right to secede from the Union if the federal government became "too intrusive." 
• Accepted or requested, like most governors, federal funds to the tune of one third of his state budget
• Accepted or requested additional funds under the decried 2009 stimulus bill of $12 billion dollars.
• Proposed $34 million in cuts in his state budget for wildfire fighting this year while decrying not receiving enough federal disaster aid for recent wildfires there, despite 25 FEMA disaster grants.
• I could go on, but my head hurts.

Are we getting the theme song here? Same as the one from the Tea Party town hall debates on health care: "Get your Socialist Government Hands off my Medicare!" We want the federal government OUT OF OUR BIDNESS except when we want them to take care of our bidness.

Okay, off my soap box, and sorry to inject the ugly subject of politics into the friday funfest, but honestly, i just didn't have anything else tonight.

NOTE: All of the information I've stated here obtained through google, keyword 'rick perry'.

The Broken Boy

The Broken Boy

A Gothic Tale

He met her 
at the crossroads

mouth on her cheek

cold as a stopped heart,

or was it only his familiar?

The light was bad

under the grey moon, and

she didn’t really care.

Whatever it was,

it held her too close,

it spoke and sang, dribbled

a thin red line in her ear,

left her its strangler’s torc

in a purple black ring as

the southern moon set

in blood and dust.

She woke up alone

gravid with its dream,

carrying to term

a broken truth, born

to learn from the swing

of the moon’s blade

how a hard hand

brings a hard life.

September 2011

Note: This poem had another incarnation, appearing for the June FEPC challenge as Moon Baby, but has since been (almost) completely rewritten.

Image: The Other Window, by ~animaSomnia

courtesy deviantArt

The Golem's Tale

The Golem’s Tale

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night. ~William Blake

Such angel’s verse is not for me

neither child of the giving sun

nor full moon’s daughter,

just a beaten orphan of the forge

metal weed and seed

of a rusted flower,

a tongue of bronze

rung in a copper bell

without the

will to lie.

No celestial choir sang my birth,

a golem shaped to serve

an alien purpose. No voice

was raised in praise, no white bull bled;

just the pounding foundry’s song,

blows of the Lame Smith’s hammer

echoing, making a sulphur contract

with eternity, my mother’s milk

a stinking silver slurry

of oil and shopdust.

And so my mindless hands

took up the work, cogdriven

droid of a deadfall dream,

whose bright tears run, melted

from a sightless eye of chrome,

a thousand quicksilver drops

on oblivion's floor. Wire bends

where glass breaks; flesh passes. 
Time in maelstrom tides tries

the temper, yet steel abides.

All the virtues of

their faults were folded in me,

wrapped in some master’s plan

numb, bound and blind, slaved to

a scripted animation; never told

whether razor, plow or piston, needle, rule

or scissors, engine, wheel or

fulcrum, never knowing when

the crack will come

that stops the iron heart.

September 2011

(A Labor Day poem for all who've been signed to a sulphur contract to eternity.)

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub
where I have the fun of hosting tonight. Come join us and bring your best. Link in will be live from now until midnight Wednesday.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Golem: "artificial man, automaton," 1897, from Heb. golem [Psalm cxxxix:16] "shapeless mass, embryo," from galam "he wrapped up, folded."Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper  

Hephaestus was the Greek god of smithing and metallurgy. He served the gods as blacksmith, and was lamed when he was thrown from Olympus by his mother Hera in a fit of pique.

Image: Golem, sculpture by Bryan Alexander Davis
By Bitterherbs1 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Fireblossom's Silent Movie Poem: The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen

A power outage in Fireblossom's vicinity has forced her to revert to pre-internet tech by having me transcribe her response to the Poetics prompt at dVerse  and surrogate-post it for her here. Any mistakes in punctuation or inconsistencies are entirely the fault of her stenographer's poor hearing over the telephone, and should not be attributed to the poet herself. Here is her  inimitable Fireblossom take on the Silent Movie era:

The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen

The silent movie queen

drops her parfait spoon,

and up comes her arm,

bent at the elbow,

delicate fingers curled

at her cupid's bow mouth;

a single tear

falling from her fabulous raccoon eye.

Who should be watching this—

Who should be riveted by this—

but the talk show radio host.

Given a mobile of microphones

by his parents

as a baby,

his mother cradled him, drenching him in her love,

and whispered,

“We’re on the air.”

The radio talk show host

dreams of surrounding the silent movie queen

with his mellifluous devotion.

Above their bed,

a red light;

next to their bed,

a bank of telephones,

all off the hook.

He believes that she

can teach him not to fear being seen.

He believes that she,

enraptured by his kisses,

might express her joy

on a charming sepia-toned

dialog card.

The silent movie queen

tilts her head,

seems to laugh, almost child-like

though she must now be over a hundred.

Her curls,

her dress,

her wide-brimmed bouquet of a hat;

all of these fill the radio talk show host with longing,

and strike him dumb with desire,

just as the ending credits come up.

In the dark, no one can see him.

In the dark

he hears her calling him

from across the years.

Calling,

calling,

caller,

( he whispers )

Don’t hang up.

by Fireblossom, 

normally of Shay's Word Garden

where you can now read this, (power having been restored to the benighted area in question) much improved and more Fireblossomy in her own font and blog style:
 

The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen

(Note: LDR = Long Distance Relationship)

Posted for   Poetics   at  dVerse Poets Pub

Image: Mary Pickford,  
By Moody, NY [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Musical Interlude~Murder Ballads

Nothing says holiday like delving into the dark side, and I'm in a mood for the darkest tonight. The first music I ever felt was my own was the folk music I heard at the No Exit Cafe and Gallery in Evanston Illinois (now relocated to Rogers Park, I believe) when I was a mere stripling--if girls can be striplings--and some days, despite everyone in my immediate family making fun of me, I have to hear it again. Tonight, it's murder ballads, and there's a rich heritage of them to pick from. The ones I've chosen were collected and written down from oral tradition by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century.They're bloody and often melodramatic, and full of the death that is the wages of sin. I guess before Casey Anthony and O.J., we were still fascinated with these things.

I'll start with Ian and Sylvia Tyson, a Canadian folk duo (Tyson wrote Four Strong Winds, which Neil Young later covered) with about as gruesome a tune as the mind can imagine--Greenwood Sidie-O, or The Cruel Mother. This is an old Child ballad dating back to 1638 of Scots origin:

There are a lot of versions of this one out there, House Carpenter, or The Daemon Lover, also one of the many traditional folk songs collected by Child, this one English, but widespread in American folk tradition as well, especially Appalachia. It's true there's no actual murder in it, but the woman dies for her sins anyway, so it amounts to the same thing. The Joan Baez version is the modern classic, and Natalie Merchant does a decent version, but I have a weakness for Buffy Sainte-Marie's take because of her eerie vocals:

In case you'd prefer the more tradional version, here's Joan Baez doing the same tune a bit differently with a few additional verses about rich attire, cloven hooves and hell and stuff:

No compendium of murder ballads would be complete without Matty Groves, yet another Child ballad of adultery and death. This one dates back to the 17th century, sung here by the immortal and long gone Sandy Dennis with Fairport Convention(vocals are over at 4:46--the rest is a crazy psychedelic folk jam):

I suppose we ought to have an American entry, with an indisputably American theme, and what could be more so than Duncan and Brady, based on  the shooting of police officer James Brady in 1880 at the Charles Starkes Saloon in St Louis, Mo, breaking up a bar fight. I'm using a contemporary bluegrass version  by the great Johnson Mountain Boys, but it's been recorded by everybody from Leadbelly to Tom Rush to James Taylor. It fits the Labor Day motif, with it's sardonic chorus: "been on the job too long...":

Phew--feels good to get that out of my system! Back to poetry soon.

Jazz Age

Jazz Age

Take it from the steal

take it from the street

take it from the speakeasy

the deck tossed under his feet,

swaying drunken flower in his

flannel bags, fedora, 
pipestem clenched,
teeth grating, another
Fitzgerald whored to
the Post. Glass raised,
posed amidships
she's an indigo nonsense,
a mad moondanced Zelda
traveling in night, losing life 
gin-draped in felt folds,
white wealth of self, 
pointed toe
broken starfish arms.

Drop it in the deep
drop it in the well
drop it in your sleep
hard to say when he fell,
drank the last bottle
smoked the last fag
wrote the last script,
oozed over the side
without making Paris, Riviera,
Antibes, never reading
Papa’s last laugh
just a sink and sigh 
in the peace blue 
sea, looking up going down
at the dancing starfish
in her tulle shroud gown
wings barely showing 
in the dark.

September 2011

Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Loosely inspired by the Fitzgeralds and some fragments of dream

Friday Flash 55 ~ Dehiscence

Dehiscence

 The fruit that’s bruised

under the skin

sits in the sun.

All the housewives

pass it by;

( they know it by its look

its feel )

until the fruit-man takes a loss

throws it spoiled away,

rolling in the alley

opening a sweet meal

of decay,

bee’s endearments,

treetop dance,

long forgotten

August 2011

Posted for  Friday Flash 55  at the G-man's

(Yes, Galen, the title is purely to bug you and drive you crazy, since none of the other words required a dictionary this time.)

Okay, I'll cut you some slack:

Dehiscence is the opening, at maturity, of a plant structure, such as a fruit, anther, or sporangium, to release its contents. Sometimes this involves the complete detachment of a part. ~wikipedia (This can by my head, if you want. ;-)  )

HAPPY LABOR DAY WEEKEND, ALL!