Off The Shelf Archive~July

It's been one of those summers, and for one reason or another I have been quite remiss about changing out the Off The Shelf page. It wasn't for lack of a new selection, though.

Months ago in a discussion of a poem, my blog friend Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily) sent me an excerpt from Shakespeare's play about spirits of air and darkness, The Tempest, and I thought of all the lines in it that are part of our daily speech, that I've heard in every kind of context my whole life.

It made me realize that there is a force in poetry that really can't be explained intellectually--it's a part of the flesh and bone of who we as human beings are, a unique invention to express ourselves in ways outside of the obvious, that makes the obvious reveal its far more hidden true nature.

Anyway, the example Karin sent me is now  here in the Off The Shelf Archive, Ariel's 'nonsense' songs, penned by Will about 1610, over 400 years ago. While the language is not really the way we currently speak, and while much of it is fully intended to be fanciful, if not outright silly,  I nonetheless am confidant that at some point, in some conversation, you have used at least one phrase from these.

I've added an additional song from Ariel,  ('Where the Bee...' ) and a (perhaps over-) familiar snippet of Prospero speaking at the very end of the play, because I can.

~*~

And now for something totally different: a last chance to read the former selection before it goes into the vaults, a poem called The Far Garden, by the incomparable Fireblossom (Shay Simmons --unless you can't stand living without it, in which case you can buy her book here on Amazon. )

The Far Garden

When I was young I asked,

Why are my arms made of blackberry vines?

And why do I

Most love to sit

In the far garden filled

With strawberries and mint?

Why do I have

Cat-tail colored hair?

Why is the thunderhead

A black mother bear?

Why is my skin filled with restless blue lightning

And the pull of the moon?

You dreamed it, child--

Is all that I was told, and it's

A sin to lie

A sin to lie.

When I was young, I ran

Away through the wheat under bright summer sun

Until I was alone

Save for sparrow and crow

With south wind for sign post

And further to go.

I sang to the quicksilver

Dead in the earth

Who lay with the bear's teeth,

The strawberry red,

And the sweet things that were.

You dreamed it, child--

Was all I was told, but the

Far garden called and we

Grew up wild

Grew up wild.

© Shay Caroline Simmons, 

2008-2013,  All Rights Reserved.

Used with permission.

from the book, My Mad Love; Poems Out In The Noonday Sun, 

by Shay Caroline Simmons

Image:Garden of Spanish Farmhouse, by Joaquin Sorolla, 1909
Public Domain

The Traitor

The Traitor

On  the sixth year's
first morning,

Annika

left the revolution.

She'd lost the means

to pay again the

too salty-sticky

stains' red blackmail;

music stopped playing

in the Enemy's screams,

Commander-cursed snow

blessed her

with blankets for the dead.
Overnight

she became a traitor

for glowworms,

the bourgeois bloom

of  marigolds,

the bark-wag

of dogs.

~July 2013

55 choruses of La Marseillaise for         the g-man

Process notes: This was taken from yet another dream, and bears no relationship to the French Revolution, the October Revolution, John Lennon's Revolution #9, or any specific historical event.

Images: Liberty Leading The People, by Eugene Delacroix, 1890
Glowworm, by Sergey Solomko, 
Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Devil's Dictionary

Devil’s Dictionary

It’s good

to shut the red

book and be

myself again

after the delirium,

to no longer be

a vade mecum

for obstreperous

demons, tauntingly

misquoted,

a dictionary

for devils;

to see the colors

unprismed from

your illusive illustrations,

random wind ruffling pages

not your spirit’s soft

secret fingers;

to feel my hair

an animal’s satiny pelt

and not a misprinted

text of memories

written across

your hands.

It’s good,

this stillness, good

even to grow old

reading my

next words 

from a

blank sheet.

July 2011

A little nostalgia. This was originally posted for the Grand Opening at dVerse Poet's Pub on their  first Open Link Night, (and for the concurrent closing of the inimitable One Stop Poetry) back when I had the privilege of working with Brian Miller, Claudia Schoenfeld, Natasha Head, Joe Hesch, and the rest of the original staffers. It was an exciting and memorable time. Due to various life and health issues, I've been unable to keep up with the ever-growing community at dVerse, but I wish everyone, new and old, all the best tonight, on the first OLN of the pub's third year.

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poet's Pub

Also posted for the Last OneShotWednesday at One Stop Poetry

which closed its doors with this final event.

The original Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, was a collection of satirical definitions posing as an actual dictionary, and contains some of the sharpest wit in the English Language. I have used the term here in what I intend as a completely different context, but felt I ought to reference Bierce's work. You can read it online here at Project Gutenberg.

Image: Still Life with Rarities, Jan van der Heyden, 1712, oil on canvas

Jan van der Heyden [Public domain], via  wikimedia commons

The Faun

The Faun

Through
 the leaf crackle

I followed the faun

from the red hollow

of the sleeper's dawn

to the dusk's clearing

of the missed trees

in the deep woods of

what used to be.

On his brown forehead

he wore seven stars.

On his root-wrists were

 my own shackle scars.

The smile on his face

candled off and on:

warm and loving,

vanished,
gone.

He dimmed and guttered

his grey foglight flame;

the sigh of his death-breath

was the call of my name

to out-see the blue sail

of the moon's shadow raft.

I danced alone in the clearing ;

the old gods laughed.

~May 2013

rebuilt July 2013

posted for     real toads

Weekend Challenge:Live A Little
"People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our..experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality; so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
~Joseph Campbell

The ever-incandescent Fireblossom asks us to write of our passions--this poem contains several of mine. 

Sidenote: Corot is most known for his landscapes, but he also painted many women over his prolific, five-decade plus career; all of them, even the little girls, have this same remote and ancient gaze.

Images: Top--High definition photo of blood vessels in the human eye,

via I fucking love science on Facebook.

Footer: Repose, by Camille Corot, 1860

Public Domain via wikipaintings.org

Missing Inaction

Missing Inaction

Summer 

empties both barrels 

--scattershot--

sunsplit concrete in 

 an empty driveway's knot;

radiator wind through

 the locust's cast case;

empty rattles in and out

of threadbare lace.

Distant blur sky

dusts molting trees

with a fading away, a wasting disease,

the septic progress

of a  powerless-walker;

empty like this

makes you 

miss your stalker.

~July 2013

55 empty heat-deserted streets for       the g-man

Random Musical Accompaniment

Photo: © joyannjones 2013