Debate Fail

It's that Friday 55 time again, folks, and I have nothing tonight, so once again I've turned to that never-failing source of inspiration, dueling Republican presidential candidates. 

For those who habitually tune out politics, last night the cable business channel CNBC hosted the 57th debate (okay, so it just seems like the 57th) between the field of Republican hopefuls wanting to challenge President Obama in 2012. During this feast of intellectual delights, two things amused me ( besides Newt Gingrich.)

The first was Texas Governor Rick Perry's brain freeze extensively covered today by the entire news media and youtube, so you've probably heard how he forgot which three government agencies he intended to close on day one of his increasingly hypothetical presidency.

The second was ex-CEO of Godfather's Pizza Herman Cain, who has been accused of sexual harassment by a variety of women, two of whom won mega-bucks in court settlements, making the statement that for every woman who accused him of such things, after all, there were thousands who hadn't. (Well, what he actually said was "“For every one person that comes forward with a false accusation, there are probably thousands who will say that none of that sort of activity ever came from Herman Cain.” Yes, he refers to himself in the third person a lot.)

Anyway, if there is low-hanging political fruit, I have trouble refraining from plucking it, and so, wrote these two little limericks to amuse myself, and hopefully those reading. No slurs are intended toward any rational human beings.

There once was a gov’ner named Rick

whose pate was remarkably thick.

He’d a plan to dismantle

some government chattel

but forgot which and made himself sick.

Herman Cain went with the flow

and asserted, “I’m raising the dough!

More ladies’ve fanned me

than those that’ve panned me,

would you like sausage with your CEO?”

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

 because I have no shame

Servant's Dream

Servant's Dream

'his heart was in the Union and his soul was reaching out for the servant's dream...'

~Willis Alan Ramsey

He dreams the servant’s dream

who finds no master;

back strong to work, hands

 that reach to make 
and tend

unfilled.

She dreams the mother’s dream

who has no child; arms that

crook to cradle, to caress,

 voice that longs

to lullaby,

unwombed.

I dream the lover’s dream

who finds no love.

the spirit thirst to drink

 the cup, the heart 

 that pours to fill it,

unopened.

I  wait to dream the servant

and the mother and the lover

come together, dream that

hands soul heart and

voice someday rest 
complete, work
 done.

August 2011

'..And in between the tunes his friends would ask him
where he'd be when the the morning came
he said through his grin, I put my thumb in the wind,
 I'm off down the road again.
Just a boy from Oklahoma on an endless one night stand
wanderin' ramblin' driftin' with the midnight sand.
He played the blues and the ballads and all that comes between
his heart was in the Union and his soul was reaching out for the servant's dream.

..the ramblin man's riz and the Kingdom's his...

just a boy from Oklahoma

on an endless one night stand...'

Image: Boys From Oklahoma Say Goodbye, 1977, by joy ann jones

Aftershocks

Aftershocks

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. 

 ~Edgar Allan Poe

Last night the giants came

marching down the great divide

the bed shook the walls ached

deep as my bones

from the need for their

heeldrumming tantrum to stop

yet after in the quiet

my heart was as loud as if

you’d come back to me.

No Pope, no Santa’s helpers

no virgin mother here

in the dark barrow.

Another 

aftershock

winter rolls back in heavy

pulled in the giants’ wagon.

The rubbled black slag of the heart is

embroidered by sleet stitchery

that ornaments as it pierces silver faultlines 

buttonholes where decay will enter
and all be shaken to dust. 

Green love goes

fast as wilting salads tossed

al fresco on the crackling summer grass

dry as ancient flesh. No more

drinking stars in a madness that
mercilessly passes.
(Another.)

In a fixed
horrible sanity

I count dull pinpoints of

retina'd starlight bruised

bulb flicker in your

averted  eye 

pulling all round me the

sleet slippery words

settling the tumbled 

to cairn loss.

Another.

I picture the handler, polite

pompadour bent to patronize

these pitiful pratfalls 

her powderwhite face a mask 

for your voice

skullsmile of Kali

rabies dripping from

her green earrings.

I draw some comfort

knowing you are numb as I

from that killing bite you've

already received.

November 2011

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Status Report~Earthquake

Just a quick update to let everyone know we had several earthquakes here yesterday, the strongest coming in at  5.6 on the Richter. All is well, no injuries anywhere, no major damage in our area, though some closer to the epicenter experienced tumbling chimneys, destroyed bric-a-brac and the like.

I was in bed reading when it happened, and I've never experienced anything like it. One can see why  Poseidon Earthshaker was a potent deity. There's something overwhelmingly personal about these types of events that speak to us on an entirely different level, and profoundly effect the imagination. Maybe it's the sense of powerlessness shattering our complacency, maybe it's simple awe, but I think part at least is the sense that the natural world is not ever completely knowable. Whatever else it is, it's definitely a catalyst.  I'll close with a quote:

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
~Frederick Douglass


Image: Courtesy US Geological Survey 

 

Circle of White

Circle of White

When I was young
down at the feed store
earnestly buying flower seeds,
in jeans dirty at
the knees, with broken nails
the old woman behind the counter told me,
Make sure you buy
some white ones.

I smiled without
looking up,
bought red zinnias
blue larkspur, orange marigolds.

Another year, dividing
daylily roots the color of parsnips, 
separating twined fingerlets 
of old gold crusted in red clay
with the ladies from the garden club, one said
The only problem with daylilies is
there are no white ones.

I looked at her, frowned,
kept the pale cool stream of water
running gently on the fat-toed feet, 
mothers and fathers
of bright orange and yellow and pink.

After a rose lecture by a very
old man, forty years
in the glasshouses, come
to teach us type and form, 
soil and pruning, texture and scent, 
I asked him which 
was his favorite rose.

He sighed 
his old man's patient
twist of breath,
pretended to love them all, 
but when I pressed him 
named the Snow Queen.

Now I’m an old woman
forty years in the garden, 
witched with white
a circle centered in snowflake flowers,
so simple, so clean
so plain and innocent of thrusting,
that all other colors are truer beside them. 

Above the autumn chaos of orange, scarlet, 
amber lemon sulfur yellow, dead brown
or hopeful blue gold crouch 
of next spring's pansies,
the last white rose calls to the eye,
cold bright and singular
as the first summer lightning 
in the night sky,
strong

as the sudden quiet that comes
after tears and howls,
the sleep after too much
Of everything.

 November 2010

revised November 2011

Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Header photo: English Hare with Purple Fennel, by joy ann jones

The rose mentioned in the poem was  Rosa 'Frau Karl Druschki'  antique climbing  hybrid perpetual rose, 
bred in Germany by Peter Lambert, 1901

The Shade

The Shade

It 

wavers silver,

shadow watching.

It wants to give. I see

the heart of the maker 

shining from its fathomed eyes 

of blue marled gold. Its thinnest of skins

is feverish hot as desert noon 

sand dry stone smooth.

What is it it needs

to give me here 

in this capsule of dream 

so badly 

as it bends me

in the cosmic wind,

past or future life or death

clings to me in a honey'd sheath

cabled tight as a rose's thorn skin.

 Flying lambent in the unseamed empyrean

  swaying harmonics of  musica universalis

propelling the blue airship of dark,

it wants me so dearly holds me 

so closely it's a matter of 

small concern that when 

I wake it will be 

gone and you 

don’t.

November 2011

Image: Danae, by Gustav Klimt, oil on canvas 1907-08

via wikimedia commons

Dept. of Since You Asked

Brendan, over at Oran's Well in his exhaustive tribute post to psychologist James Hillman yesterday, well worth a read, included some photos of his bookshelves and journals, and issued a challenge to play I Showed you Mine Now You Show Me Yours--so, who can resist posting the minutiae of one's life on the internets? Not me, that's for sure.

NOTE: You can CLICK the pics for a larger size where titles are clearer, and a slideshow view.

I'll start off with the notebooks. This is a poem written unusually for me in longhand, from 1987 (I blogged it here, revised.)

This one is typed, before the advent of word processing software in my life, where my poems get written these days (it's here if you want to read it):

And here's a characteristic entry--an unmailed love letter:

Now for the real fun, the books:

Above, The Crimson and the Blue Fairy Book, Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, etc. Below, titles faint between Vanity Fair and Jude the Obscure we have Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina:

No one can fault my eclecticism here--the big blue book is a Robert Louis Stevenson anthology, the small black one is H. Rider Haggard, the other black one the Dalai Lama(Art of Happiness)Mary Renault at the end with Mask of Apollo, interspersed with biographies of Neil Young and Janis Joplin:

More Poetry and Stuff (yes, Stevens is there, his name is red and illegible)also all my new myth books, Armstrong's the Great Transformation, The Master and Margarita, and Dubliners:

The dining room overflow, mostly cookbooks:

My beloved Hort books:

I have many many more shelves left which I could post, but it would be wrong, so last of all, my workroom, where I compose and decompose, and sit with my crickets while I converse with you all.The shelf to the right of the printer contains my game collection, all the way to the floor:

This was a lot of silly fun, so thanks, Brendan for provoking it. I do think that books are an integral reflection of who a person is. I'm very interested to see if anyone else takes up the gauntlet. I can think of several of my bloggy friends whose collections I'd love to lay eyes on--(Mark, Ruth, Fireblossom, Anna, I'm looking at you.) and anyone else who thinks it would be fun, feel free to link up your pride and joy in the comments should you do a similar post.

Corrected poetry shelf, with a refresh on Ansel Adams--Native American petroglyphs this time:

Night and the Moth

Night and the Moth

Night’s wind blows restless

lifts and tosses back my hair

playing as you do

taking all keeping nothing

candled longings gleam

where moths and I dream alone

god faces above

stare through their black mask sky holes

night is not thinking

of the torn moth at the lamp

mad for light as I for you.

November 2011

Posted for   FormForAll   at dVerse Poets Pub

Where the gracious Lady Nyo (Jane Kohut-Bartels) introduces us to the beautiful forms of Japanese love poetry found in the Man'yoshu. I have chosen to try my hand at a short choka.

and, because it has exactly 55 words, also posted for 

the inimitable G-Man's  Friday Flash 55