Bumper Stickers I Have Known

Bumper Stickers I Have Known

 A broadside

Driving along,

I suddenly see 

 in the middle of the road

an honest politician 

and

slide to a halt, because

I brake for hallucinations

Signs all over

the neighborhood

sprouting like toxic mushrooms

the day before the elections

for every position from

assistant clerk to congressman

I wonder how  much deeper the ocean would be

without sponges?

Watching the debates

glassy-eyed at the onslaught

of uncut absurdity lightly mixed

with manipulation and tossed

in a dressing of lies,

I seem to hear someone say

You’re just jealous because the

voices only talk to ME!

Can we take your vote,

ignore every reason you

gave it to us, 

vacillate and compromise, 

walk away from change

 anyone 

could believe in,

then ask for it again?

Yes, We Can.

Because

There are only two kinds of Republicans:

Millionaires and Suckers.

Meanwhile 

I put my head

in my hands 

and sigh,

If assholes could fly

this place would be an airport.

October 2011

Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Brian Miller has been inspired by the concept of bumper sticker poetry this week, and is sharing it with the world. If you can jot down a bumper sticker's worth of thoughts, come join us.

Notes: A broadside is defined by dictionary .com as "any strong or comprehensive attack, as by criticism."

Obviously this isn't really much of a poem, but hopefully it's good for a laugh. Text in bold is derived from bumper stickers--that is, I didn't make it up to offend anyone. I've chosen to put them in a political context, and have removed some of the offensive content I originally came up with, but hopefully left enough to still tick somebody off, because I certainly am every time I think about the current state of our polity.

Assorted Haiku and/or Senryū

i.

Autumn comes alone

naked in a bath of swords;

Spring’s false promises.

*

ii.

Dawn in my doorway

stripes on a standing tiger

Waiting ~ not today.

*

iii

Up all summer night 

pen finally stops chasing

the moon it can't catch

*

* * *

*

 

iv.

Tomorrow I wake
smelling your books and oatmeal
now twenty years gone.

*

v.

Ghost ship passing by~
light of my heart I’m with you
as the wind fills the sails.

*

vi.

Flat bird on the road;
wind of each car passing lifts
a wing still in flight

*

***

*

Posted for   FormForAll   at dVerse Poets Pub

where Gay Cannon has written a very informative article on these often misinterpreted  Japanese forms.

Link in will be live till Friday at midnight EST. Come join us. 

also 

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

because I got lucky and the poems in blue (#'s ii, iii, iv, and v) add up to exactly 55 words

I will let those who know more than I divide these into type, as I would probably  be totally and completely wrong, so take them with a grain of western salt. I'm far from into this form. Most of these were posted on twitter in one form or another, the bird wing one I wrote about twenty five years ago, some, like the ghost ship one, were written today.

Image: Photograph, Dead Leaves with Water, 

posted on flick'r by my good friend Petteri Sulonen,

who blogs on a wide range of subjects, including

matters economic, political and Zen at

Come to Think of It, 

a most excellent and eclectic site.

Thanks Petteri!

Off the Shelf Archive~October

It's time to refresh the Off the Shelf selection for the month of October, which marks one year of blogging here at Verse Escape, and is also the month of All Hallows, when everything that goes bump in the night does its best bumping. 

So I'm bringing out the big guns of the macabre, my old childhood companion, Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)with my utmost favorite from him, Ulalume, in all its ineffable soaring and occasionally silly bleakness, plus, because Halloween is my favorite holiday, an extra poem--just a small side dollop of the stark with In the Desert by Stephen Crane (1871-1900) to take some of the purple pouffe out. 

Sometimes it's hard to read Poe with a totally straight face as an adult, and yet he comes up with some amazing language that just knocks you backwards, even as you're shaking your head going, "over the top" or "sometimes less is more."

Crane is Crane, in this one, short, sharp and merciless. If you're only familiar with him as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, his poetry is more than worth exploring. 

You'll find both poems here on the Off the Shelf Page

And here is the previous selection for one last reading before it enters the vault, The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems, by Yusef Komunyakaa, this years winner of the Wallace Stevens Award for Poetry. I wrote more about him last month and included some links here if you're curious about him.

As always please feel free to comment on either poem here, as comments are disabled off the main page. Suggestions for next time are always welcome, also.

The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems

Was he looking for St. Lucia's light
to touch his face those first days 
in the official November snow & sleet 
falling on the granite pose of Lincoln?
 
If he were searching for property lines
drawn in the blood, or for a hint
of resolve crisscrossing a border,
maybe he'd find clues in the taste of breadfruit.
 
I could see him stopped there squinting
in crooked light, the haze of Wall Street
touching clouds of double consciousness,
an eye etched into a sign borrowed from Egypt.

If he's looking for tips on basketball,
how to rise up & guard the hoop,
he may glean a few theories about war   
but they aren't in The Star-Apple Kingdom.

If he wants to finally master himself,
searching for clues to govern seagulls
in salty air, he'll find henchmen busy with locks
& chains in a ghost schooner's nocturnal calm.

He's reading someone who won't speak
of milk & honey, but of looking ahead
beyond pillars of salt raised in a dream
where fat bulbs split open the earth.

The spine of the manifest was broken,
leaking deeds, songs & testaments.
Justice stood in the shoes of mercy,
& doubt was bandaged up & put to bed.

Now, he looks as if he wants to eat words,
their sweet, intoxicating flavor. Banana leaf
& animal, being & nonbeing. In fact, 
craving wisdom, he bites into memory.  

The President of the United States of America
thumbs the pages slowly, moving from reverie
to reverie, learning why one envies the octopus
for its ink, how a man's skin becomes the final page.

by Yusef Komunyakaa 

Nereid

 Nereid

She came to me

because with bell book and candle

she was cast out, alone

with her wand of basil and stars.

She stroked my hand, wrapped me round

in words of a tongue I could not speak.

She stood naked before me

hairless and smooth as bone

an offering I had no use for

and I was sad for her wildness

that could find no home on this earth

except in the fretful dreams of

the starving.

October 3,2011

 Image: Nereid, Berthold Nebel (1889 - 1964) Photo: Doug Coldwell, via Wikimedia Commons

Puzzle In The Language of Flowers

Puzzle in the Language of Flowers

(translation below)

I dump the puzzle box

out on the ground

each piece becomes

a flower in yesterday’s bouquet

a bone of tomorrow’s skeleton.

I pick up concave paper polygons

knobbed cardboard segments

that seem to represent part of an eyebrow, or the side

of a building, but are really a sprig of acacia

lacy as midnight's clouds, thorny as memory’s stems

and here, a misshapen lump of astringent

yellow sun, the witch hazel that began it all.

That obstinate wedge of azure sky fitting nowhere

has to be the withered trumpet of a

morning glory, heavenly blue still.

Ah, an end piece.

The frame that hangs the whole

surprises the hand by jumping up

a striped carnation pinwheeled 

with a monotonous grief

 

that makes me recoil

throwing it

far across the muddy ground,

lost on the moss where it

comes to rest just bones, 

tiny, articulated phalanges,

the frontal and parietal

temporal, occipital, mandible

white as frost; out of the cardboard jaw

perhaps you can see a few daisies growing

among the marigolds, rosemary and rue

there for a century’s moment till

the next wildfire passes through.

October 2011

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub
Join us for an evening of shared poetic goodness at the pub, open from 3:00 PM EST Tuesday till midnight EST tomorrow.

Process Notes:

acacia = secret love                 witch hazel=magic spell 
morning glory=love in vain        striped carnation=refusal
marigold=pain and grief            daisy=innocence, simplicity, cheer, true love 
rosemary=remembrance            rue=regret      

Train of Fools

Train of Fools

All

aboard the

train of fools

every car a loaded die

every porter's got the snake eye
avoids your hand clamp

pallor, skin damp

jacket too tight

rackety clatter
through the night

smoking car reflex dome

an iron sight takes the range

on your home

where 
it's strange

connection 
and sensation

are 
mutually exclusive states
distinct fates

(Can you live in San Berdoo 
and Peru ?)

(O

no)

Traps within traps

hot breath 
of the engine claps

chuffing hot coal scale

(or the  sweet exhale

of murmured praise  
so strong

so hot so soft so sweet)
land on your feet

You want a raise?

Put some 

juice

in 
the 
caboose.

Which is it 
you think you’re

here for, babe

the work

or the pay?

October 2011

Optional musical accompaniment(and props for title)

Or, alternatively:




thank god he doesn't try to dance in this video...

Image: Train in the Snow, Claude Monet, 1875 Oil on canvas

via wikmedia commons

Eight of Swords

Eight of Swords
or The Peony and The Ants

Marilyn,

peony face made a

succubus poster

painted in blood and blue

aqua saturation of misery’s 
tea bag memories

steeped too long
staring with Mona Lisa's
cherried tiger eye.

Marilyn
met the King of Cups

in a dark alley off Pennsylvania

They fought with pentacle

and sword of which

she was the eight spot

but the end was

predetermined;

cards on the table

swept to the gutter.

The blind peony 
bends her neck as if

for the axe, unopened,

waiting for the ant surgeons

to snip the stitches which

close her pink eyes;

they eat  the soft

ragged edges and

turn the flower

brown as dirt.

October 2010

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poet's Pub

Our host this week is the multi-talented Victoria Cerreto-Slotto and the topic deals with Pop Art, as in this ekphrasis on Warhol's take on Marilyn Monroe.

Come join us and share a poem. Link in is live till Sunday midnight EST

Process notes: I've borrowed an old horticultural myth about peonies and ants here. It was once believed that ants, which congregate on the tight new flowerbuds of Paeonia lactiflora, were required to open them and pull the petals back, turning the edges brown, which is totally false. Ants feed on the nectar which the swelling buds produce and neither help nor hurt the plant. (The observed damage is generally due to thrips, a common garden pest of flowers, who tear the delicate tissue with their rasping, sucking mouthparts and feed on the released sugars--here these functions are deliberately distorted/transposed.)

I've also borrowed some symbology from the Rider-Waite tarot(image of the 8 of Swords via wikipedia The Rider Waite Tarot deck is in the public domain.)

Marilyn image courtesy of dVerse Poets Pub 
By MichaelPhilip (Own work) [Public domain] via wikimedia commons

Thalia's Nocturne

Thalia’s Nocturne

Night’s  pearl mistress is away

so the sky is full of children playing

balanced  on their heads or toes

somersaulting in silver slippers,

staying up too late, hyperactively

forming up their line dances

on the autumn marbled wind

pretending there’s no bedtime 

as the ballroom’s  far horizon

closes in.

Your head should fit

here, love, over my heart 

under the dance

so you can feel that slow tide

ancient as Adam’s fall

your hair curling through my hand

morning glory fingers climbing my soul;

you’d raise your eyes to mine and the sky

with all its dancing brats would be a darkness

not of any interest

at all.

Instead I hear the 2 AM freight

stomping its feet on a rusty track,

a dyspeptic mastodon

rhythmically grunting

in guttural gastric distress,

plopping its piles

of audio dung behind it

as the chill of fancy’s fade

becomes forgotten

burbglow to the west.

There is no dignity

to this life, O I know

but  sometimes,

a laugh's

as good 

as a kiss.

October 2011

Image; Thalia, by Jean-Marc Nattier, 1739, oil on canvas

Jean-Marc Nattier [Public domain], via wikimedia commons