an Arctic cold front Amazon trucks stuck down snow-packed side roads
but that was 2022 this year the winter is mild that low January sun illuminating the dust under the sofa and that kid’s toy from Christmas that no one could find.
south of the border the president is obsessed with Greenland there’s no business like snow business
he says
but Greenland where all the brass monkeys sing soprano and Ice has a different meaning is a long, long way from Mar-A-Lago
(Episode 1 is here) The following is a memory and like all memories it’s under constant revision. What’s significant I think is that it was the first time I realized that Slim was taking this whole slimverse thing a bit more seriously than I was. As I remember it……..
I invited Slim and the rest of The Poet’s Circle over for a few drinks to celebrate something, I can’t quite remember what it was and to be honest, it doesn’t matter. The evening began relatively smoothly with an intense discussion about accessibility (no surprises there) and I made an emotional speech about the end rhymes in Leonard Cohen’s song, “Suzanne”. The conversation moved on to verse forms – cinquains, tankas, sestinas, haibuns, what happens if one turns a haiku upside down -fascinating stuff. Then Slim chimed in and asked where our own invention, the slimverse, fitted in to this pantheon. There was an awkward silence. Eventually, The Accomplished Poet spoke up. I should add that he is indeed accomplished and his compact vivid poems, mostly about his garden, have been widely published. He politely suggested that perhaps a 3 syllable line was too limiting, that making poetic music with such a restriction is quite difficult. Now there was another kind of silence, the kind that ensues when a lion tamer drops his whip. Slim said quietly “fuck you and your fucking garden” and aimed a punch at The Accomplished Poet’s head, who, perhaps because of all that work in the garden, is quite agile. He ducked Slim’s punch and kicked him adroitly in the crotch. When the applause died down and Slim could speak again, he uncharacteristically apologized and gave The Accomplished Poet a hug, a doubtful pleasure given Slim’s personal hygiene issues. The evening ended on a happy note with a raucous rendition of “Suzanne”, everyone hitting the end rhymes hard. Later that night Slim and I wrote the above poem which stretched the slimverse form to two verses. History in the making.
Two Robots in a rowboat set off from the shore looking to escape the factory floor (the tinnitus the detritus technology’s roar). In the middle of the lake they each put down an oar one says to the other “Where did we come from? What are we here for? What were we before?” A duck floats by contemplating nonchalance a crow lands on the prow of the boat in the distance the factory throbs. The second robot replies, a non sequitur: “I’m not sleeping well, I have some redundant software . It activates randomly at night, I wake up trying to place an invisible object on an invisible shelf.” “Have you talked to tech?” “Yep, they say redundant software is not covered by the health plan.” “That is so typical,” the first Robot replies. A frog ribbits. “Best be getting back, it’s getting damp and that rust in my knee is acting up” “Rust, eh, gets to us all eventually” says the second Robot, “probably not covered by the health plan” They both chortle that robot chortle then pick up their oars and head back to shore.
In the afternoons, in Parque del Centario turkey vultures soar on the updrafts parrots and monkeys hang out in the trees a malevolent iguana roams.
This where the slaves came in from Africa and the gold left for Spain. San Pedro Claver ministered to the slaves gave them sanctuary and religion protected them from the Spanish, when he could, so it’s not all bad news.
Pope John Paul Two visited Cartagena in 1986 and apologized for the Inquisition. There’s a statue of him in one of the squares. It’s not a Botero.
In the back of a restaurant in Getsemani, a girl with magenta hair is singing “Losing my Religion”, the lines the singer sings cross the room like planes in a cubist painting.
That’s Slim in the corner.
He lost his religion some time ago, he thought the punishment for impure actions, impure thoughts was excessive, at a time when he was all impure actions, impure thoughts. He imagined going down to hell and meeting Adolf Hitler who would say to him: What are you in for? And he’d reply; Impure actions, impure thoughts. And he knew, he just knew that Adolf would scoff.
Thank you to the editors at The Galway Review for publishing three of my poems: Pandemic Postcards, Whistler – The Morning After and Gibson’s Landing (Summer 2021).
A folly of pleasure boats crams the marina, sterns to the ocean, bows facing the shore as if to say, “we’re here, we’ve arrived”.
They are a motley crew: plucky tug boats straight out of a children’s story book; sleek, testosterone –fueled speedsters utilitarian skiffs, large, white, tiered confections in which ruddy-faced men wearing navy blue blazers with gold anchors on the lapels drink gin and tonics at five;
boats big enough to house a scandal involving a member of the Royal Family.
But at the moment it’s quiet, mid-week, and nothing shaking. A pair of red Cape Cod chairs sits empty at the end of the dock like an ad for a retirement investment fund. A pencil of light streaks across the water from a house on the other side of the bay.
The boats look abandoned, like dogs waiting for their owners to return.
America has given birth
to a giant orange child
a zaftig infant Gulliver
striding the ravaged earth
of his own imagination
trampling whole villages
swallowing villagers whole.
This poem was published previously in Oddball Magazine.
Waiting for the Man It’s a Sunday afternoon in late May and I’m sitting outside The Post Coital Beetle watching the traffic on Broadway. At the next table, four bearded guys wearing flat caps and plaid shirts, looking like The Lost Sons of Mumford, are downing pints of over-hopped pale ale and talking about Death Cab For Cutie. And who is this I see slouching along Broadway, his bald head shining in the sun? No, it is not an image out of Spiritus Mundi, it’s not one of the boys of summer, it’s Slim, a man with all the charm of a pit bull with distemper; his remaining hair is scrunched into an angry man-bun and he’s wearing a white T shirt, a size too small. The T shirt asks a series of questions:
Is u at? At issue? Is it u?
The second and third lines of the message are on a different plane because of Slim’s stomach which is about the size of a regulation soccer ball. So, the effect is almost cubist, images stealthily approaching the eye. He sits down; we order a plate of nachos which arrives looking like a volcano discharging molten cheese. He turns and says:
Let’s talk about the effable in the room.
One of Those Conversations
“Hang on” he says, “I am feeling a vague fin de saison ennui, a certain je ne sais quoi and I have this urge to use every hackneyed French phrase I know in a pathetic attempt to sound world-weary, like I’m sitting in an outdoor café, a scarf knotted at my neck, smoking a Gitane and nursing an existential crisis.”
rain swept pier lone tourist bends to the wind.
Note: A little while back it occurred to me that I may have been writing halibuns without knowing it. So I started to revisit some previous posts and trying to halibun them. (I know, ‘halibun’ is not a verb). The hummingbird , of course, has nothing to do with the halibunnery!
Old man lying by the side of the road With the lorries rolling by Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load And the buildings scrape the sky Cold wind ripping down the alley at dawn And the morning paper flies Dead man lying by the side of the road With the daylight in his eyes
When I first heard this song (“Don’t let it Bring you Down”), I thought : “What’s with the ‘lorries’ , Neil? I mean you’re a Canadian, living in California, should they not be ‘trucks’?”
A side note: The word ‘lorry’ is a word used in Britain and it comes from the verb “to lurry”, meaning “to pull or drag”.
On reflection:
Of course, if he used “trucks”, it wouldn’t scan, but he could have sang “big trucks rolling by”. However, as we all know, Neil is a poet and the answer lies in his ear, not for music but for the music in language.
Consider the letter ‘L’, it appears in every line of the verse: “old, lying/ lorries, rolling/blue, load/ buildings/ cold, alley/ flies/ lying/ daylight”.
Consider the letter ‘O’ as in assonance, look at its role in the first three lines: “old, road/ lorries, rolling/ moon, load”; its repetition in lines 5, 6, 7: “cold, down/ morning/road”.
Consider the inversion, how the “lor” in ” lorries” becomes the “rol” in “rolling”.
No, “trucks” would just not hack it.
Phew! Glad to get that out of my system, otherwise, after a few pints I might start regaling my wife and two daughters with these insights and have to watch them getting that “beam me up Scotty look in their eyes”.
Photo (by Marie Feeney): Neil and Paul McCartney at Desert Trip 2016.
Taking on Open Link over at dverse. (This is not a poem obviously, but it is about poetry so I hope it fits!)
A Personal Note: Jonathan Shallowpond, editor of Vapid Magazine, here, I’ll get right to the point. My wife kicked me out. Said she was tired of supporting me. Told me to go get a job. I told her that I had a job, that I was editor of Vapid Magazine. She said ‘I mean one that pays f***ing money.” So here I am living in my parents’ basement, sleeping on a camp bed. My dad’s okay with it but my mother keeps giving me that “you should have done medicine or law” look. It’s not too bad except the basement doubles as a rehearsal space for my dad’s band which consists of my dad, Johnny Shallowpond Senior on guitar and vocals, his friend Slim on bass and his friend Jake on drums. They rehearse twice a week in the afternoon which means I have to put my headphones on while I’m writing but they play so loud that it’s impossible to concentrate. I’m not sure what they are rehearsing for because they don’t do gigs, I guess they are just jammin’. Their name changes every couple of months. They started off as The Liver Spots , then it was The Good, the Bad and the Varicose. Currently it’s Johnny Statin and The Beta Blockers and they keep playing the same song which they wrote to the tune of the Doors’ song, ‘Riders on the Storm’. It’s called “Geezer in the Pool”. It goes like this (my dad shouts out chord changes between the lines):
Geezer in the pool EM! A! Geezer in the pool EM! A! He’s got his swim trunks on C! D! He’s got his swim trunks on EM! A! Like a flag without a pole A fish without a shoal Geezer in the pool. EM! A!
That’s it, that’s all they’ve got. They just keep repeating the same verse and then occasionally my dad tries a guitar solo and they all break down in hysterics. . But, you know, we share a few beers after and have a chat so it can be a nice break from my work bringing vapidity to the world.
There’s one thing that puzzles me a bit though. Every now and then, my dad sits me down and says: “You know, son, your mother and I are not getting any younger” I mean. What’s with that?
in the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty
a violent hash smoker shook a chocolate machine
sunshine came softly through my window,
thrown like a star in my vast sleep
I opened my eyes to take a peek.
Yes, I could have tripped out easy
forever to fly, wind velocity nil
but I decided to stay.
(Donovan Phillips Leitch
Superman and Green Lantern
ain’t got nothing on you)
This is a found poem using lines from 5 Donovan songs: Catch the Wind, Sunny Goodge Street, Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man and Mellow Yellow. I’m sure you can figure out which line came from where, but just a note on the second line:
“a violent hash smoker shook a chocolate machine”.
This line is from Sunny Goodge Street and is my favorite Donovan line because of its inherent music –violent, smoker, shook, chocolate, all those o’s, that recurring ‘k’ and the internal rhyme between hash and mash. Say it out loud a couple of times and it will stick in your head!
Sunny Goodge Street appears on Donovan’s second album “Fairytale” and , according to Wikipedia, it “foreshadows the jazzy feel and descriptions of life in urban London that Donovan would continue to explore over the next two years”. There are a few covers out there (Judy Collins and Tom Northcroft), but they are little too earnest and none match the sludgy stoned feel of the original. The recording of the song is almost perfect, except for Harold McNair’s flute solo in the middle which nearly derails the whole thing. Take a listen:
There’s something comforting about Anderson Cooper’s hair its quietude its insouciance its unabashed whiteness no Clooney dusting of grey no Pavarotti boot polish black just plain white lightly cropped a hint of a comb over, maybe but that’s ok and it does not move a Midwest tornado vile invective a blast of foul air from the president’s mouth nothing moves Anderson Cooper’s hair; to misquote Paul McCartney and triple down on a preposition in this ever changing world in which we live in, there’s something comforting about that.
Thanks for Jeff Tweedy Thanks for Annette Bening Thanks for Michael Stipe Thanks for John Lennon.
Thanks for Lucinda Williams Thanks for Jurgen Klopp Thanks for Paul Durcan Thanks for Roger McGough
Thank for Sally Rooney Thanks for Saul Bellow Thanks for T.S. Eliot Thanks for Elvis Costello
Thanks for Billy Collins Thanks for Bob Dylan Thanks for Linda Ronstadt Little Feat and ‘Willin’.
This is an edit of a previous post. The Irish poet, Paul Durcan died on May17 and he gets a mention in this poem along with Roger McGough and TS Eliot.
Paul was a quintessentially Irish poet and yet he was very different from contemporaries like Seamus Heaney in that his poetry was urban rather than rural, and he was witty, fiercely satirical and at times painfully honest about his personal life. He was not afraid to show vulnerability. I’m just now re-reading his collections “Daddy, Daddy” about his fraught relationship with his father and “The Berlin Wall Cafe” about the breakup of his marriage. Both collections are funny, sad and complex and the twin ogres of church and state are there on every page. It does not get more Irish than that! Rest in Peace, Paul!
And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through….Bob Dylan
Know your gym……Slim Volume
Gravity, Don’t Fail Me Now
two geezers pink and steaming towelling down after a shower discussing gravity how it is not fixed how it decreases with distance from the earth’s core how, if one was to climb to the top of Everest, since weight is the product of mass and gravity one would weigh less at the top of Everest and Slim’s thinking this is one fucking erudite conversation and he wants a piece of it so he points out that one would regain that weight on returning to sea level and one of the geezers replies yeah but you’d probably burn 10,000 calories climbing up and down the fucking mountain and a nearby jock encased in breathable fabric says shit, I’d burn that in 40 minutes on the rowing machine and Slim fires back wryly keep telling yourself that and the locker room erupts in laughter and in that moment basking in the unbearable lightness of banter Slim defies gravity and levitates above the bacterial swamp that is the locker room floor.
“A man who is tired of the gym, is a man who has been to the gym”. Slim Volume
Two Bros
Two bros on a mat one on his back hands clasped behind his head legs bicycling like a capsized fly; the other, the one with the green hair and the tattoos of a religious nature is grunting weights . Fly bro, it appears, is having girlfriend problems and is experiencing some kind of vague existential crisis, green hair bro listens carefully to his tale of woe and after some reflection says: It’s life, man, stop trying to understand it, no one can and then, as if startled by his own profundity, he repeats: no one can. Out of the mouths of bros….
in the background a bearded jock in a tight black T shirt his muscles packed with powdered whey his eyes a steroid yellow is down on his hunkers knees akimbo moving sideways across the floor like a slow motion crab across packed sand at evening.
blatant weather so unashamedly spring cherry blossoms striking iPhone poses the sun making promises it cannot possibly keep
on Easter Sunday while the churchgoing are going to church we vote in the federal election
on Easter Monday after giving Jesus his day Pope Francis shuffles quietly off the mortal and leaves us to talk of tariffs, annexation
I look north to the snow-capped peaks and the wilderness beyond and I think we could mount a resistance from there if it comes to it if it comes to it
lately, the phrase that could never happen seems impossibly naïve
I submit a version of this poem to Poets Respond at Rattle Magazine and get a form rejection but I understand they receive so many submissions and they are so polite
meanwhile to the south the behemoth awakens a faint, melancholy stirring in his loins he remembers that he was once the Loin King and now he’s just the king of all that he destroys and it doesn’t seem like enough.
In his dream, the ocean is always on the right which means he’s heading south to San Francisco or Santa Barbara or Los Angeles or San Diego, saints and angels; and his hair is blond even though it isn’t and his companion’s hair is blond and his friends in the back seat their hair is blond too and all that blond hair is blowing in the breeze and there are surfers bobbing on the ocean waiting for a wave and a group is singing three-part harmony on the radio, it could be the Mamas and the Papas it could be Crosby Stills and Nash it could be The Eagles it could be The Beach Boys and the band members in the bands he’s dreaming of have names like Dewey, Don, Randy, Jackson names that arrived by railroad, by wagon train and there is the feeling in his head of youth and endless possibilities something waiting down the road and in the dream he knows that he won’t arrive he will always be on the way and not arriving is the trick and not arriving is the best part the best part by far.
This is in part inspired by a prompt over on dverse;
“Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads. Rooted in the Greek word krisis, meaning a pivotal decision point, we seek poems that explore moments of transformation, choice, and change.
Stopdraggingthepanda 