 lights this night with tender candles |
Posted on 11/24/2003 9:52:48 AM PST by January24th
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changeling winds
smell of hearths
burning bright
changeling winds
smell of hearths
burning bright
Burning bright
hearth sighs
winds that draw
everything in
maghreb
indigo shadows
bow in fluorescent lit shops
we are all night hawks.
Unclean
in a cash economy
the smallest bills are quickly
greased by the beggar's palm.
misty airs
bagpipes,drums
ancient streets
It's British Night Watch
reverberations ringing
carolers singing
I love where I live
|
lights this night with tender candles |
silent nights
Selene's circles signal
snow soon.
The year in review
Here’s to the little god Tourettes
who puts strange words in peoples heads
makes them say things they never think
and creates an awful stink
If we are parcel and part
of the world and all its evil arts
how’s one to know what’s in ones heart
until we suffer a brain fart.
For when the mind misfires and slips
it’s not often “I love you” on our lips,
and we are likely going to utter
words that come straight from the gutter.
So Kramer is a stand up guy
who’d never take a racist stance
but one day it just happened
that his brain had a momentary spasm.
Had he in character remained
he might have salvaged his good name,
instead of words dark and raw,
he could have just said Yo Yo Ma!
Or Mel who could reason throttle
in his passion for the bottle,
see the world beset by Jews
then hide in rehab from the nightly news.
A little booze, a verbal tic
his tongue was not his own to rule,
strange words he heard from his own jaw,
he couldn't just say Yo Yo Ma!
And Zidane in the heat of the final game
thought he heard someone dis his mother’s name
and took it into his head
that something really bad was said.
But context cannot be subdued by law,
for what is our mind but real estate,
its not the thought but its location,
which Materazzi, clearly saw,
for all he said was Yo!
yo ma.
Excellent.
Contemplating the convolution
of creation and evolution,
to see emerging from pond scum,
a creature with an opposable thumb.
A primordial soup frequently salted
with spontaneous mutations
is a process often faulted,
with dead ends not meant for elevation.
A work in progress never quite completed
He uses sex, His gift to man,
to naturally select who gets deleted
just what the heck's the master plan?
If in her image we will be made
what if its just a bad hair day,
and she decides to change direction,
'cause she's unhappy with her reflection?
If its true He makes no mistakes
then what about all those out-takes?
It may be too much to ask but,
I want to see the director's cut.
Fabulous work, I love it.
Glad you enjoyed. And now a rewrite and reprise of an earlier poem.
On mere cats,( after Wallace Stevens "On Mere Being"
Is there any doubt cats
preparing for sleep can make
the most substantial mattress
shake as if tectonic plates
should shift in response
to the devout ministrations
of the tongue?
Their collar bells ring a vesper
keeping faith with the night. We put
our hands together, clasp a silent prayer,
lay down our palms just one clashing
moment away from giving it up in praise.
At the end of the day we sway
the stirring of our own wind, a song
to keep from the private places we haunt
like cats. Then we fan our frond fingers
like a peacock’s tail, hide behind
up-dangled eye-spangled feathers,
cast our own gaze down.
Always we will bend our branches
to the weight of cats that know
the value of the bird in hand,
and collect like dust on an invitation
merely being offered without regrets.
And we wait for rough tongues to translate
our devotions into the smooth coat
of reason. Which is why cats must
settle the doctrinal disputes
with their own fur with such violence
before they rest--palming tomorrow
like certainty is a birdsong
they can catch.
WOW, just WOW.
brown
winter
jazz
bends me
to the
wind
Tree frog
The voyeur at my window,
clings to the glass
with his suction pad eyes;
enters the room like night
creatures go silent
when a twig snaps.
Noticed, he fades.
New grass springs back
slowly from a footstep.
Locomotion
Box cars explode with scrap metal.
Files of graffiti on rusty wheels polish
tracks in passing. Big steel blows through
elevator towns risen on rails going down.
Thunder unrolls righteous scrolls, raps
dayglo on black. Lightening leaps grade
crossings, bears banners of industrial artists
who practice targets, demand notice.
Bullets thwack approval on spray paint.
Incredible words bulk, hulk, split their thin
coloured shirts, stalk the sides of cold
rolled plates. Super heroes in ripped tights
refuse to surrender to their wounds;
drip iron- red rain into puddles.
(satin side against your body)
“ Affectations can be dangerous”. Gertrude Stein on hearing of Isadora Duncan’s death.
Sometimes silk seeks
to slip its painted flower
fortune, rewind the cocoon,
floats, twists, turns.
Stronger than the tensor, it pulls
the dancer into its threads
her feet at last defying gravity
upended indeed and dancing
with the sky.
Isadora was twirled
like a waxed mustache
but eurhythmia was not listed
as the cause of death.
For nothing takes colour
like silk though white shoulders
shrug,vibrant in satin next to skin.
It doesn’t matter what it
feels. The charmeuse hangs
on any armature, finds an anchor
for its web, wraps everything
in its strings. Just being fabulous
flaps like Phlebas’s last flutter.
Tightens.
Idiomatic
Dear,
I am painting the baccaras today, because I love the way the edges fade from black into deep red; light where there should be dark. I have pools of viridian and vermillion,drag shadow into the light like we once curled our backs against the world and kept the places where we touched warm. You once told me a cynic was a rose blackened in the bud, you were right about most roses. But not about baccarras.
I had my last class yesterday. Hoda asked all the interesting questions as usual. We were discussing phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions. We laughed when she asked me if it was correct to say “we hanged” and I demonstrated its connotation by circling my neck with my hands sticking my tongue out, and saying generally it refers to humans and this particular event. I am not as fluent as I want. Drama substitutes. Black draped shoulders shake around eyes ignited with laughter. We say ma a’ salaama for the last time
It means this. Taghreed has gone Egypt hoping to find a safe place to raise her sons. Maryam is a monument of Russian plastic surgery, she wants be as young as she was when her family was killed. Salwa has found her nephew in Indonesia, with some distant relations. She was terrified he had been seduced by “people.” There is a new Thai masseuse who uses the string method of hair removal, I have finished the portraits, and destroyed the photographs Here it is difficult to find paint, but nothing is impossible. I have artists quality turpentine, alhamdulillah. Small appetites satisfied, don’t necessarily grow. At home people on the coasts who read the news will tell me something I don’t know about the butterfly effect. A bat will wave black wings over his victim fanning peaceful dreams while the red flows.. Somewhere far away darkness will descend unopposed. Nothing is without consequence.
The veil that hangs over the stones in the souq is resolute. The sun that fades everything begins to fail, as dust makes a lens of sunset. The mountains begin to unfold their ridges like black rose petals that keep the light curled away. Just for a moment, the fire seems to flare from deep within and of course I thought I’d write you because you never knew about this. Beneath the blight, like a book charred in the fire blasts from its binding, words at the center remain. Though the years advance and a carapace of darkness covers me, baccarras will always send my thoughts to you.
S
old saws, don’t cut anymore
Blackberry autumn
oh my fingers no longer oppose
age comes and dexterity goes.
And despite all I’ve done
I can’t text anyone
for I am no longer all thumbs.
enthymeme
My tongue is more sharp than my wit
and my malice is cut with a lisp
so it goes without saying
when my own praises braying
there’s likely more to the less of it.
mechanical assistance
My glasses are bending my ear
their oracle perfectly clear
when your waist and lens thicken,
and time’s steps do quicken
their echoes you likely won’t hear.
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