An Unfortunate Happening On The Stump

I wrote this 55 last week, and what a perfect day to post it, with a Happy rewritten Ending, as former Republican presidential candidate  Rick Perry at last surrenders to the inevitable and goes back to make life in Texas hell, instead of persisting in his bid to do so for the entire country.

An Unfortunate Happening On the Stump

I don’t know why
you came today
I only wish
you'd go away,

hair pouffed-up
in 'Statesman Grey;'
when your jaw moves
--instant replay.

Now it seems
my wish I'll get
you're finished, smoked
as a cigarette.

Your botoxed eyes
can't express dismay 
but they weep--for the money
you just threw away.

 
January 2012

Biting Political Analysis for   the G-Man 

Image courtesy Pundit Kitchen, at I can has cheezburger?

Spelled Out

Spelled Out

I finally noticed

when the trees fell and

the leaves were bare

when the sandstorm rained  moss

when summer rode into January

on a seahorse

that you had put

a spell on me.

I think I saw you

slip flashpowder

in my cells and light it

with a whistle you blew

from the corner of serious and Canis Major

and when that howling is on me

when the spell is wound up

I’m deaf and leafdrunk; 
I drop

like a marionette when the puppeteer

breaks for lunch, watch you

pull a string from my
soul laces and hang it 

on your ley line

to dry in the stone wind.

I never asked

to be this 
charmed

but now I find I can’t navigate without

my wheel tied down tight, so

I drive with eyes closed

drift to the side of a two lane night’s

brownout desert, and bump

myself still, afraid of the broken mirror
afraid to get out of the crazy car 
and walk

the crooked ghost town of my life.

January 2012

Image: Carhenge, by cm195902 on flick'r
Shared under Creative Commons 2.0 Non-Commercial License

This Blog Is On Strike Against SOPA

 Stop SOPA/PIPA
In support of the protests against SOPA/PIPA, 

Verse Escape will not be participating in either blogging or social media activities during the black-out period on January 18th.

 This blog is joining wikipedia, reddit, and many others in "going black" to protest the enactment of alleged "anti-piracy" legislation censoring the Internet on behalf of large entertainment and broadcast companies, now on the legislative floor of the US Congress. 

Here's a brief explanation of the two bills SOPA and PIPA by BBC News:

"Sopa and Pipa explained

The US bills are designed to block access to sites containing unauthorised copryight material.

Content owners and the US government would be given the power to request court orders to shut down sites associated with piracy.

Advertisers, payment processors and internet service providers would be forbidden from doing business with infringers based overseas.

Sopa also requires search engines to remove foreign infringing sites from their results, a provision absent in Pipa."

 

There are many things wrong with this, but possibly the worst is that the bills are so poorly written and conceived, they leave tremendous room for abuse. 

If you'd like a full analysis of the issue, the BBC article continues here 

Since this is a blackout, comments are disabled on this post to simulate the censorship process. Here is a link to a petition you can sign to protest to Congress:

Thanks for reading, and get ready for lots more of this, I'm afraid. The internet is the biggest single threat on the planet to those who want to control media, money and ultimately, people's minds. It needs to remain a force for intellectual, artistic and personal freedom, and that isn't going to happen without a fight.

Many thanks to Mark Kerstetter of The Bricoleur for providing links and inspiration, and Susan S, of Prufock's Dilemma for the text at the top of this post. Verse Escape returns to normal programming tomorrow.

Feeding The Plumed Serpent

Feeding The Plumed Serpent

The day after our wedding with the moon

in the piercing sun of a blood drinking god

we rode back through dust on the rocking bus

shy dark children patting, taking my yellow hair

for lizard feathers. They turned off Madonna and

you sang their songs. They laughed your laugh

each one the child we'd never have.  

We went back to the slum hotel and locked the door

while the drunks hurricaned up and down the halls;

we the same up and down the walls, the stairs, the

fretted sheets, up one belly and down the other

till we were drunk as they could never be

and saw the things no seer ever could say.

When your body moved on mine in neon glare

it was the black shadow and white light

of that pyramid of skulls and jaguar’s caves

where amaranthine sacrifice filled

death’s new toybox, blood for lubricant
easing the clockwork bones,

throats craned toward the copper knife, 
your dark eyes swimming with night

carving into timeblurred petroglyphs  
my life upon their lids, feathered cries
vapor murmured out in velvet visions,

spinning down down

into the solstice of light and dark.

In the cold morning we drank atole hot and sweet

with all the vanilla thickness of my flesh

against your whipcord bones a steam

rising remembered in each sip.

Your thin musician’s hands held the cup

in mimic of the circling of my breasts

stroked to purrs and sweat on the hard bed.

Oh, having me for breakfast was

the richest meal you ever bought

and paid for with
each drop of the god’s owned blood

until time came

to put the toys away.

January 2012

Note: This is a carnal companion piece to a much older poem of mine,

At Teotihuacan, posted here



Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Feathered serpent head at Teotihuacan via wikipedia

Atole is a thick drink made with milk and masa, flavored with sugar, vanilla or chocolate,cinnamon or other spices, usually served hot. 
 
 The Plumed, or Feathered Serpent is Quetzalcoatl, a deity whose first worship is seen at Teotihuacan, pictured above, in the first century BC or first century AD, later spreading across Mesoamerica. He is variously, a harvest god of fertility, a creation god, god of books and inventor of the calender, a wind god associated with the planet Venus, and the god of the Aztec priesthood who brought visions to shamans. There is archaeological evidence of human sacrifice at the Pyramid of the Moon and elsewhere at Teotihuacan as the top picture shows, but it should be noted that Mesoamerican culture believed the universe was sustained by a great ongoing sacrifice and that the highest form of repayment to the gods was human life.

Header Image: Detail of one of the burials found in the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan,dated around 200 AD. by ~s shepherd (schizoform) on flick'r  via wikimedia commons  Footer Image: View along the Avenue of the Dead to the Pyramid of the Sun, taken from the Pyramid of the Moon,by Jackhynes via wikimedia commons (yes those tiny ant-like shapes are people--the pyramids  are huge, but set in such a vast open area it's hard to tell the scale.)

Musical Interlude~Leonard Cohen

This song, soon to be released on Cohen's new album, Old Ideas, has totally invaded my brain:

There's also an informal performance/soundcheck vid, with some nifty guitar work and rather drastically different in spots lyrics, from 2009:

Leonard  Cohen, is 77, (born 21 September 1934)  Canadian, and a longtime amazing and amazingly prolific singer-songwriter, and poet, among other things.It's typical of him to release this on the internet with no strings, no yawing copyright/piracy garbage--to me it's an example of that pure desire we all have to not just write something, but to have it be heard, and do its work.

Thank you, Mr. Cohen.

Tidal Island

Tidal Island

an incantation

The causeway

teases covered

uncovered

shadows long
waiting

for the ebb
shadows abraded
falling away.

The mountainous

oceanfloor walks
forgotten 
shadows 
scatter the petals of

pink anemones

on the shore abandoned

shadows gut

the found fish.

Island not

an island
song
not a poem

broken bridge

a bridge

grey rock 

in the wood

where no wood is,

sun center 
circled

by shadows,
call the morning  
through.

January 2012 


It's Open Link Monday at real toads

Process Notes:
My attempt to write a piece with no personal pronouns & minimal punctuation.

 

Images are of St Michael's Mont (Cornish: Karrek Loes y'n Koes meaning "grey rock in the woods") a tidal island located off the Mount's Bay coast of Cornwall. When first settled, the island was part of a mainland woods and agrarian settlement, later inundated and cut off by the ocean. In various theories, it was a port for the prehistoric tin trade, or possibly the historical nugget behind the Arthurian kingdom of Lyonesse.

images courtesy wikimedia commons.

 

 Pink sea anemone, via web brittanica

Mortality and the Little People

Mortality and the Little People

When I die
open the gate;
no traps.
Let this clay burn
to the visible
nothing it already is.

Let the wind blow,

let the knowers know,
let me go.

Oh I’ll see
the dancing leprachaun no doubt,
with fire for a hat and death for a snout
His cheeks are red
his eyebrows shed
and he grins like a goat with
his oversized prong
come to roast me
toast me for a party favor
but I’m determined to give back
a rather off flavor.

After the gate opens, fire
has taken all it can.
Go home
and sleep alone.

Let the wind blow,
let the rain turn to snow
let me go.

January 2012

Posted for     real toads

 Image: photograph by Isadora Gruye
Used with permission

Tribes

Tribes

The past is romantically rotted,

regularly rewritten

the vampire sucking at the future;

we know we can’t go back

and forth from the grave

yet still we cling to his blood clotted cloak

for that deathsmell high he sells,
the lie we can't live without.

We bathe in the black essence of a thousand

million compressed reptiles' tarred blood

fatten on the pretense a pigmentation

a language, a way of walking, 

a perfume, a feather,

a red dress, a neighborhood, 

incubates an alien immune to 

thought or grief.

We eat the spiders of our tribes and

call them good beef, though it’s closer

to soylent green, suck out the phantom

succulence from the compliant citrus

of our senses, and always always 

we worship a golden coined god

whose paper horns 

nod and approve.

January 2012

Posted for  Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Victoria is hosting at the pub today, and has given us the art of Columbian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero to work with. Come join us. Link in is live till midnight Sunday.

Images: El Conquistador, and Man Drinking Orange Juice, by Fernando Botero, have been removed due to possible copyright problems. They can be found through a google title search if you want to look at them.