Musical Interlude ~Who Will The Next Fool Be?~ Various Artists

This is an old Charlie Rich song I have a particular fondness for, having lived it several times. I'm including the original version, by Charlie Rich himself, and an unusual take by Mark Knopfler and zucherro. Last, there's my personal favorite, one by the best band that never made it, the Amazing Rhythm Aces.

So take your pick, kick back with your beverage of choice, and enjoy.

Snow Go

Snow Go

Snow sparrows shy from the black

unnatural rubber of the car on iced asphalt.

Winter throws softballs against the glass,

trees seem to bend away in the distance

wishing the snow that blankets the road

could hide it, block it

and let their secret world continue

without my car, my fumes, my noise, my uselessness.

January 2011

Also posted for Friday Flash 55 fiction at the G-man's

Posted for Magpie Tales #50

Uncredited photo provided by magpie tales removed

Off the Shelf Archive - January #3

Wrapping up January with a final Off the Shelf selection, and this time it will be two short poems by the 20th Century American poet and writer Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) Brautigan wrote during the end of the Beat era and the full onslaught of the 60's counterculture years with black humor and directness. He may be best known for his longer works like A Confederate General from Big Sur or Trout Fishing in America, but his poetry has a sad and clean feel well worth a read or reread. Friend of the blog the walking man suggested 

Karma Repair Kit, Items 1-4, and I've added  Hinged to Forgetfulness Like a Door.  

You'll find them here in Off The Shelf Archive for February, #1

As always, feel free to comment on either poem or make suggestions for next time here, as comments are disabled off the main page.

Thanks to the walking man for the  Brautigan rec, and you can find his own ever-intriguing writings here on his blog, The Walking Man

Here for a last look is the prior selection,  Pablo Neruda's excellent poem, Cat's Dream

 

Cat’s Dream

How neatly a cat sleeps,
Sleeps with its paws and its posture,
Sleeps with its wicked claws,
And with its unfeeling blood,
Sleeps with ALL the rings a series
Of burnt circles which have formed
The odd geology of its sand-colored tail.

I should like to sleep like a cat,
With all the fur of time,
With a tongue rough as flint,
With the dry sex of fire and
After speaking to no one,
Stretch myself over the world,
Over roofs and landscapes,
With a passionate desire
To hunt the rats in my dreams.

I have seen how the cat asleep
Would undulate, how the night flowed
Through it like dark water and at times,
It was going to fall or possibly
Plunge into the bare deserted snowdrifts.

Sometimes it grew so much in sleep
Like a tiger's great-grandfather,
And would leap in the darkness over
Rooftops, clouds and volcanoes.

Sleep, sleep cat of the night with
Episcopal ceremony and your stone-carved moustache.
Take care of all our dreams
Control the obscurity
Of our slumbering prowess
With your relentless HEART
And the great ruff of your tail.

Pablo Neruda

Image: Sleeping Cat, Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1862, courtesy google image search

Hedgerider's Lament~Part II

Hedgerider's Lament~Part I can be found here
Hedgerider's Lament~Part III can be found here

The Hedgerider's Lament

Part II: Candlemas Sestina

Winter rides the leafless hedgerow, black and aching for the thaw

a frozen masque of mummers misbegotten by the hag.

A dying moth in winter’s web, I’m null, unwarmed by fire.

I call to the guardian of the living earth to forsake her vestal  well

to bring her yellow days and put an end to the strangling white;

instead of snow make milk for lambs and wake the sleeping sun.

I pulled the blackthorn's sloes and brewed the gin of autumn’s  sun,

drank deep, then burned the sticks to keep alive until the thaw.

The Cailleach’s staff struck and brought the tedious vault of white   

where water was married to restless air in the couplings of the hag.

There are bruises for the hand that cracks the ice-crust on the well

and earth’s white cloak hisses on the coals of the worldsmith’s fire.

Once amber green my fingers tore the world-skin, meeting fire;

finding only the haunt of a look, a tendriled scent that fled the sun.

No living hand can draw your twisting wisp from that black well.

Only wishes' mist can pass between, and dust awaits the thaw

I hunker by a murdered fire and bandy curses with the hag,

who laughs and shrouds my hedgerow tight in her bands of white.

Yet there’s Another coming when the blackthorn flushes white

and the wind will thrash the greening twigs as all is cleansed in fire.

The spring will dance her mayday on the apron of the hag,

and unwind the days and bring her bag of blue that holds the sun.

The Cailleach will freeze, a standing stone before the thaw,

while her snow becomes white water rushing azure to the well.

So day’s full light expands and ice is melted from the well.

Tomorrow’s gin is brewing in the blackthorn’s buds of white.

Grass-green grow the seedlings as the hedgerow starts to thaw

and winter stubble burns but I’m still cold beside the fire.

The blood-burned breach still shows itself a curse beneath the sun.

The silvery white bride’s smile still flirts with the eyes of the hag.

But a bride might need a midwife someday, hidden in a hag

and a hag might be more than a  weight  best cast into the well.

The carcass of  dead caresses burns to ashes in the sun

and births a skin of amber green that swallows up the white.

Summer gives her pledge of life and bids me tend her fire,

and all her seed and kindred in the razor leaved hedgerow’s thaw.

Perhaps this year the sun will shine so clear and burning white

that the hag will laugh to see me in the mirror of the well

and I’ll forget the thing that’s broken as the world  begins to thaw

Posted for OneShotWednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

For pronunciation of the word Cailleach, click here

I’ve borrowed heavily from Gaelic folklore in this piece, so I append a few background snippets to cast a little light on terms and definitions. Those interested in more detail can follow the wikipedia links:

Candlemas is a day of purification in the Christian faith often associated with the ancient Irish festival of Imbolc,  celebrated in early spring.

“… In Irish and Scottish mythology, the Cailleach …is a divine hag.. The word simply means 'old woman' in modern Scottish Gaelic.. The Cailleach evinces many traits fitting for the personified Winter:...she fights Spring, and her staff freezes the ground. …Some interpretations …describe the Cailleach as turning to stone on Bealltainn...

I’ve also made a few references to wells and fire that are associated with the Cailleach’s counterpart, Bridget or Bridhe, goddess of spring and summer, christainized as St Brigid.

Image: Cailleach  by RedDragon102857

Fever Dream

 Fever Dream

So many nights I go to bed alone

still thinking what I dream is what is real,

your name a vesper on my lips of stone.

The past is just a rind that I have thrown

beneath the churn of time’s unknowing wheel

that grinds the nights here as I sleep alone.

I hear your voice, a whisper made of bone.

I feel ghost arms that shut like traps of steel,

and pray for respite with my lips of stone

to ears made deaf, from which all care has flown,

that heed no word of mine, that will not feel

the burden of these nights I sleep alone.

I send my mind to sail on the unknown,

where fever dreams float ships that dip and reel,

and every seasick night I sleep alone.

The journey that I make can’t end in home

when nothing seen nor felt is ever real.

Yet still each night I go to bed alone

your name a vesper on my lips of stone.

January 2011

 posted at OneStopPoetry, Monday Poetry Form, Villanelle

Image : Golden Galleon by Jacques Moitoret

The Moment

The Moment

In the flying moment

a wisp of smoke

fast twisting and gone  

a book of lost patterns,

pages blown away

In the silent moment

the bartender pours a river

between opening

and closing time,

unheard by the crowd

In the changing moment

room for everything

time for almost

nothing  before

the door swings shut

In the turning moment

light perfects an angle

shows a  golden texture

hones reality to a turquoise dress

two cigars and a laugh.

In the perfect moment

there’s only time to

breathe it in and exhale it,

catch the random and be it,

in the moment.

January 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Photo by Mike Roemer

Greybeard

Greybeard

The wind is from the west and blows the storm.

You’re grey in my thoughts,

blown across sky, my very grey matter,

puffed far like a cloud from a smoldering pipe,

blown quick as the cunning flight of grey doves

who understand the shadow of the hawk,

cloud pale with the cottony softness of mare’s tails

flying above waves to veil the sun’s glare

when the sea is finished with drama, content to be softened,

washing living and dead in its slow endless pulse.

You’ve lost all the red

angry words, the ice white silences

long ago and your soft words stir oatmeal smooth and

rumble, plump cats by the hearth fire, dozing near the embers.

Your voice is a lullabye, secret

and tender as a ruffled wren with a ruby glass heart,

clear as the night sky swinging her moonshot skirts,

pink mother of pearl, with the round white moon daughter

on her opalescent cushions gently

turning the bowl of sky to prism the earth with silver light.

You and I danced for for so long

circling our lives, wrapping the bands around the maypole,

weaving the yarns of years to make the tale

we now tell together, of   two journeys

that became one traveling, filled with the scarlet clamor of blood

and the black and purple bruises of grief,

across a mad planet to a place of moss and stone

where the dancers can rest, and the journey can end

with  the grey hairs of wisewomen and white

beards of wizards nodding together.

January 2010

Image : Old Man With Flowing Beard Looking Down Left
Rembrandt Van Rijn, courtesy, rembrandt online

Off the Shelf Archive - January #2

It's once again time to refresh the Off the Shelf selection before the month of January swoops completely past, so W.H.Auden's excellent As I Walked Out One Evening is brought to the front to make room for a poem by the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda (born Ricardo Eliezer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto) won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1971, and  wrote in a wide range of forms and styles, from erotica to surrealism, from the short and direct to the book length and epic.

While Neruda's love poetry is unequaled, I've chosen Cat's Dream, as a poem that shows all of his gifts for image and illuminated language and is less commonly seen. It's always hard to believe reading Neruda that you're reading a translation; his words seem to be able to transcend those limitations.

As always, feel free to comment on either poem here, as comments are disabled off the main page, and also as always, suggestions for next time are welcome. I have only one rule(or only one I've made up so far, anyway,) and that's no repeats of the same poet within a year.(This keeps me from posting nothing but Wallace Stevens or Octavio Paz or whatever.) Previous Off the Shelf selections can be found here or by clicking the tag in the sidebar labeled Off the Shelf Archive.


 So without any more preamble, here's a last look at Auden's As I Walked Out One Evening:

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,

     Walking down Bristol Street,

The crowds upon the pavement

     Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river

     I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of the railway:

    “ Love has no ending.”

“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you,

     Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

     And the salmon sing in the street,

“I’ll love till the ocean

     is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

     Like geese about the sky.

The years shall run like rabbits,

     For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

     And the first love of the world.”

But all the clocks in the city

     Began to whir and chime:

‘O let not Time deceive you,

     You cannot conquer Time.

“In the burrows of the Nightmare

     where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

     And coughs when you would kiss.

“In headaches and in worry

     Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

     Tomorrow or today.

“Into many a green valley

     Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

     And the diver’s brilliant bow.

“O plunge your hands in water,

     Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare at the basin

     And wonder what you’ve missed.

The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

     The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the teacup opens

     A line to the land of the dead.

“Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

     And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

     And Jill goes down on her back.

“O look, look in the mirror,

     O look in your distress;

Life remains a blessing

     Although you cannot bless.

“O stand, stand at the window

     As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbor

     With all your crooked heart.”

It was late, late in the evening,

     The lovers they were gone.

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

     And the river deep ran on.

W. H. Auden      1940

Photo: courtesy google image search

Grey Geese

Grey Geese

The long forgotten party

spilled out on the snow

away from the day's work, 

away from the houses,

and every winter journey

started there, where three women walked.

The first day was for cooking,

and the cleaning up after cooking.

The second day was for eating,

and the cleaning up after eating,

but the third belonged to the women

and they chose the frozen pond.

Just the three of them, leaving

behind the children tired but playing, 

the menfolk fed full and playing

with whiskey and cards in the back room.

They came to skate

but they meant to fly.

One was practical; she would always work

hard on the ice, skirts heavy, soon damp,

using her legs, pulling herself along

brow furrowed and bent to the purpose,

to make herself fly like the geese

who migrate because they have to.

The second woman was preening.

She piled her hair high, picked her fancy hat 

and her striped coat to twirl for the watchers.

Full of smiles for the performance,

she skated with show but precision, like

the geese form up in line.

The third woman was caged. She

came to skate out of her world.

She knew the ice was perfect, she knew her circles

and figure eights were the meaning

and pattern in things, like the geese know

how the sky leads away from winter.

The long forgotten party;

three women grey in the distance,

united in a vee    far out on the ice

         smiling and flying

away from the work, away from the houses.

Every winter journey started there.

January 2011

Posted for Magpie Tales #49

Photograph by Tess Kincaid, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

Working Class Crab

 

Two Poems on the Crab

Working Class Crab

In the mind of a crab, the whole world’s something dead,

full of 12 hour days with no time to draw breath.

His benefits suck, but at least he’s well fed.

In the mind of a crab, the whole world’s something dead.

There’s no dancing, no love, not a thought in his head

about why he works on in the factory of death;

In the mind of a crab the whole world’s something dead,

full of 12 hour days with no time to draw breath.

The Crab and I

In the mind of a crab the whole world’s something dead

and hunger‘s the hell that he keeps in his head.

He trolls the long beach with his eyeballs on stalks

turning widdershins, searching as sideways he walks.

The joseph’s coat sunrise just doesn't exist,

nor the hot siren’s song nor the cool evening mist.

Crossing a footprint of Everest dimensions

has little to do with his will or intentions.

His work needs no family and no place of rest,

just a groping and hunger that’s only expressed

by ceaselessly searching in every tide-spring.

The mind of a crab makes the world a dead thing.

No self-awareness, no angst in his breast;

yet he and I both think the dead must taste best.

Like the crab I want nothing from anything new.

I eat a dead meal made from memories of you.

January 2011

Posted for OneShotWednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Photo: Sand Crab, by Petteri Sulonen

WineSpeak

WineSpeak

Playing at love poured out in a twist stem crystal glass

clear ruby,with notes of cherry and madagascar vanilla bean,

I’m here to sing them straight from your lips, drinking in a kiss

heavier than the outlaw tang of saddle, earth and tobacco,

far sweeter, sunnier than cranberry, red current, ripe raspberry

chambered blackberry, or clamoring, astringent key lime.

I'll crush the garnet red fruit and bitter black together

tilt back my head and toss them down, the taste

teasing to a lingering earthy finish

(tangerine and nectarine)

with just a bit of pepper and

restrained use of oak.

It’s all nuanced

fragrantly

integrated

with

waxy

apricot

spice

bright green

apple

acidity

(and pears)

dusty

fruit

on the nose

of living

with a round

lush

mouthfeel

against

a mossy

background,

(no kiwi)

aged

to finish

short and dry

with perhaps a little heat,leaving behind

a fleeting hint of licorice and clove over wet stone.

A vintage year for pinot noir, chenin blanc and the occasional lover.

January 2011

Disclaimer: all these analogies and terms are commonly used in the world of wine critique. I simply rearranged them a bit in a silly shape to entertain myself (and hopefully the reader) on a very dull day.

Image: Rare Georgian Knopped Opaque Twist Wine Glass c1760, poetically described as
"A superb example of a triple knopped double series opaque twist ...antique wine glass. The bell bowl sits above a stem with a pair of heavy spiral threads outside of a loose central gauze, and with shoulder, medial, and basal knops. Conical foot with rough, snapped pontil...."  source link

Burn this Poem

 

Sleepless I rattle in my bed remembering

your kisses like the startled jump

of small restless animals rustling in the dead grass,

alive on my lips timid and scampering

like plump mice,

your turquoise eyes suddenly opened,

glowing like lamps in an empty house

throwing gold shadows on the snow of my heart

How can you be so prudent with me,

so measured and bespoken,

when all those elves and animals

are dancing inside?

 Such a year of being bound

has never been and

surely will not

be again.

That kiss

after many beers

and words--

are you just now

yourself

coming untied?

1991, revised January 2011

photo by Katherine Forbes

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Friday Flash 55 ~ Goodbye Already

Adios So Long Farewell Goodbye Don’t Let the Door Hit Your Ass

On the Way Out

Goodbye……

I seem always to

be saying it;

fainter and fainter,

Good by…..

Any other name I can call

looking at the back of

what’s walking away,

 waving my hand

like the ocean

at the shore.

Good…

Grief always running

after something shapeless

that won’t stick

Goo..

No one there

to hear it

Aright then

Go.

November 2010

Posted for Friday Flash 55 at G-Man's

Sanctuary

Sanctuary

It was the time of cold.

The water from the sky ran black like inky blood

and the tree in the dark storm was ripe for burning,

solitary acolyte in a serpentine ceremony of snow.

You kissed my summer dry palms

just before you ran to your winter white pack

far off along the indigo rim of night.

I heard the howling begin

without me. I pulled in the last syllable of stone,

and stripped to bare words. A single step danced me 

from maenad to anchoress, peering through the squint

at your unconsecrated communion.

January 2011

Submitted for the Monday January 10 Prompt at Big Tent Poetry, which was to utilize alliteration by choosing a letter, writing a word list, and using the ideas it generated for subject with a word from it for the title.

Photo: © Copyright Colin Smith and licensed for reuse under  Creative Commons License.
Cell of the anchoress Christine Carpenter, 14th Century. Shere, Surrey, UK 

Exercise in Metaphor

Exercise in Metaphor

Under the trashcan my rosemary lies, concealed to

endure bleeding hell in this intractable garden,

so far removed from your wild conception as a weed

for Aphrodite’s aromatic cloak, spun of the sky god’s seed,

living dew of that Attic sea from which the goddess rose

before Athens, white limbed and cold as fear.

You were her mantle of living warmth, austere.

You lived on sea spray and sun in the maritime dunes,

wild and free as the piping of Pan.

Your  needles mimic tongues philosophers ran

standing where grey pillars capped words of gold

now debased and traded from your native land.

You eke out your life a  commodity of man

in each fold of this foreign world that seeks your savor,

still giving your pale shy flowers to each rutting bee.

Here you’re made to stand against the burning dree

of American days, feet bound in clay unaccounted,

damped with calcareous tepid water shorn of salt.

When hard times come, I cage and darken you in a vault,

make you winter a cold that wracks your bluegreen bones.

Wind sucks them dry and bleeds you like a blade.

Still in death you give what’s asked from what you’ve made,

that undying and remembrance laden scent

that releases mnemonic prisoners from their cells.

But all’s forgotten now of what your fragrance tells;

how once you were the herb of bygone alchemists

boiled to bouillion in precise alembic wells;

for sweet union men once begged those body-spells.

Your arms were crowns in countless high endeavors.

Even crushed in death your juniper lingers.

Tonight the front freights down with frozen fingers.

Blue express of oblivion, dark wailing wind.

Across millenniums still the sky god gives and takes.

I bind you in  burlap, secure the shroud it makes,

cover you with a  plastic catafalque

meant for the dregs and detritus I buy,

and your last freedom, daughter of the sky,

is to choose if it’s better to live like this or die.

January 2011 

This is my entry for OneShotWednesday, at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Image 1: West Front of the Parthenon, Edward Dodwell, 1821, Views from Greece. 

Source: wikimedia commons.

Image 2: Rosemarinus officianalis

Source: wikimedia commons

Off the Shelf Archive-January #1

Yes, it's that time again. The archivist is finally bestirring herself to get up off her dyin' rear and provide some fresh fare for the Off the Shelf page.  

Off the Shelf features poems by my Favorite (Usually) Dead Poets, unless someone else requests a selection from one of their own favorite authors. Margaret Atwood's Sekhmet the Lion Headed Goddess of War will be dusted off and moved here, being replaced by 

As I Walked Out One Evening,   a long but rather quick read from W.H. Auden (1907-1973), Anglo-American poet known for a wide use of forms and techniques over a long and eventful career. As I Walked Out begins in a very cheery and almost commonplace manner, but read on, my friends, read on.

As always, feel free to make a suggestion for next time or to comment on either poem here, as comments are disabled off the main page. Older selections can be accessed by clicking here: 

Off the Shelf Archive     or on the label under Tags in the sidebar.

And now, Sekhmet makes her final appearance before retiring to the Archives:

Sekhmet, the Lion-Headed Goddess of War

He was the sort of man
who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Many flies are now alive
while he is not.
He was not my patron.
He preferred full granaries, I battle.
My roar meant slaughter.
Yet here we are together
in the same museum.
That's not what I see, though, the fitful
crowds of staring children
learning the lesson of multi-
cultural obliteration, sic transit
and so on.

I see the temple where I was born
or built, where I held power.
I see the desert beyond,
where the hot conical tombs, that look
from a distance, frankly, like dunces' hats,
hide my jokes: the dried-out flesh
and bones, the wooden boats
in which the dead sail endlessly
in no direction.

What did you expect from gods
with animal heads?
Though come to think of it
the ones made later, who were fully human
were not such good news either.
Favour me and give me riches,
destroy my enemies.
That seems to be the gist.
Oh yes: And save me from death.
In return we're given blood
and bread, flowers and prayer,
and lip service.

Maybe there's something in all of this
I missed. But if it's selfless
love you're looking for,
you've got the wrong goddess.

I just sit where I'm put, composed
of stone and wishful thinking:
that the deity who kills for pleasure
will also heal,
that in the midst of your nightmare,
the final one, a kind lion
will come with bandages in her mouth
and the soft body of a woman,
and lick you clean of fever,
and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck
and caress you into darkness and paradise. 

Margeret Atwood

Photo courtesy of wikimedia commons source link

Poisoned Apple

Poisoned Apple

Green like money

Red like hell

Golden with promise

Eat the apple, innocents...

You won’t feel the poison

till tomorrow.

Before then you have time

to buy a box of gold

some ammo

to keep the brown ones down...

Plenty of time to

take a warm bible bath

move the constitution 

to your toilet paper spindle

use that flag of your fathers

for a blindfold

and kill my enemies.

You don’t have to grab, my child.

It’s all yours, my gift...

Shriveled dead skin.

Rotted pulp

Fermented and infested.

Did you like the apple?

Why don’t you answer?

January 9, 2011

Red Shoes

 Red Shoes 

A Rondel

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red.

She rang her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams.

The master cued her moves and sewed her seams

and made her body over like a doll’s without a head.

He choreographed her pas de deux, a masque of the dead.

She must be only air, her bones hollow as moonbeams.

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red,

stiff her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams,

She danced through the night. Her shoes were red,

though cream when she began the final themes.

She rang her bell of tulle and ribbons, dress of dreams.

Violins bowed the razor while she bled.

She danced through the night, her shoes were red.

January 2011

Red Shoes Photo by Lara Hartley, courtesy google image search

This was written for Annell Livingston and her Red Shoes Project

Also posted for the One Shoot Sunday photo prompt, which was this picture by KJ Halliday: