Dried out cylinders of Canada goose shit dot the blond grass like discarded cigarillos sailboats scud across ruffled water gulls engage in glaucous caucus (Ok, that was a bit much) and the sand, the sand is busy stowing away in pockets, shoes, swimming trunks, ear drums boldly going where no sand has gone before and still the pandemic lingers like that unwanted house guest you thought had left but no, no, no, there he is drunk, snoring and flatulent stretched out on your basement floor.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
Todd’s basement materialises he sees the dark wood veneer panelling, that tartan colonial sofa his uncle gave him, the dark patch where his uncle rested his head still glistening from the oil slick of his uncle’s hair, in the corner, his wife is playing with an electrical cord. “Don’t pull the cord, I’m not fully back yet!” Todd screams.
His wife’s voice comes back a little garbled by the time lag “I hope you’re going to clean up that damn dust this time”.
Todd returns to the present, presents himself and sneezes into his sleeve leaving a black smear on his plaid Mark’s Work Warehouse shirt. Unknown ramifications unforeseen outcomes, that 21st century air trapped in the time capsule drops to a lower carbon dioxide concentration as the capsule travels back in time the surplus carbon dioxide reverts to the original carbon forming a black dust which coats the inside of the capsule; thing is, it’s a one way process no one knows why
“You look like shit”, his wife says “You look time-wasted, you look timed out, what happened to your hair?”
Unknown ramifications unforeseen outcomes time travel messes with your hair alters your DNA deletes your vaccinations the dangers of rushing a technology to market too soon.
Todd’s wife grins “I wasn’t really going to pull the cord”, she hugs him, grinding slowly “What did you bring back for me, this time?”
“conjure an imaginary house of any size, any place, any age fill it with an imaginary person/people past or present, or ghosts, or leave it empty with its history make it literal but move into the metaphorical if you wish”
the bark of broken mufflers pickup trucks idle at the Starbuck’s drive through air con running a gang of bikers middle-aged and leather clad roar up the coastal highway
it’s been a long hot summer fun fun fun in the pandemic pause (is this the real life is this just fantasy?) and yes, it’s hot but it’s a guilty heat and there’s the nagging feeling that the future has arrived too early
that science fiction has become fact
smoke from forest fires silts the lungs of the town Daddy never did take the T Bird away.
(songs quoted and misquoted in the poem: “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and “Fun! Fun! Fun! by the Beach Boys)
Ingrid Wilson of Experiments in Fiction has put together a collection of poems called The Athropocene Hymnal (63 poems in all, from 34 poets). Publication date is July 24th. Many of the poets, including myself are regular contributors to the blog earthweal. I have 2 poems in the collection (thanks, Ingrid, for including me!). All profits from the sale of the book will go to the World Wild Life Fund. So be sure to check out Ingrid’s blog on July 24th!
Brendan over at earthweal has published an interview with Ingrid and also more details about the publication, so check out Brendan’s post here.
The collage on the cover was contributed by the very talented Kerfe Roig.
In his earthweal prompt this week, Brendan says :
For this week’s challenge, let’s take up her (Ingrid’s) call and write a poem of the Anthropocene which does not compromise.
This is a poem I wrote a while back (it appeared before on earthweal) and previously published on this blog, but think it fits the challenge.
Fracking Song
You’re standing on the corner Watching the trucks go rolling past Pumping out their diesel fumes Pumping out that carbon gas
It’s the middle of winter And it’s twenty below And that gas just sits there With nowhere to go.
Something’s wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Ten in one year And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town.
That rock’s been down forever With its hydrocarbon payload When they blow it all apart They can’t control where it goes
And that water that’s left standing Evaporating in the sun The residue will be with us Long after they are gone
Something’s wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Ten in one year And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town.
You can blame the politicians The special interests groups Blame the fracking company They all don’t give a fuck
There’s only one thing they understand One thing that they know Keep riding that fossil fool train As far as it will go.
There’s something wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Placentas like ribbons And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town
He weighs about 300 lbs is wearing a cowboy hat and an XXXL tee-shirt, made by an underpaid worker in a communist country.
This paragon of rugged individualism this zaftig freedom fighter this ersatz John Wayne is telling the interviewer he doesn’t believe in vaccination passports
because, you know, I mean it’s a threat to our personal freedom if we go down that road what’s next
and I’m thinking yes there are slopes out there and yes they are slippery what next indeed… driver’s licenses birth certificates visas to enter countries security checks in airports customs concealed weapons licenses
but most of all I’m thinking God help the horse God help the horse.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
I’m standing in the liquor store staring at a bottle of Pinot Grigio when Wild Thing by the Troggs comes on the store speakers and I’m thinking, to quote Leonard, that song is a shining artifact of the past and just as I’m thinking that one of the Troggs launches into a bizarre ocarina solo and I turn around to find myself face to face with a large blue and yellow parrot perched on the leather-gloved hand of a lady who has seen hippier times never at a loss for words, I say, “that’s a nice parrot” and the lady says “I have three more at home one of them is a real man-hater but this one here is my favowite he’s a vewy, vewy, vewy nice pawwot” she says, nuzzling the parrot, nose to beak the parrot inflates its technicolor plumage let’s out an almighty squawk and displays its full wing span and I’m thinking “Wow, there’s a ocarina solo in the middle of Wild Thing, who’s that on ocarina I think it’s the lead singer what was his name, Reg Presley, I think, yeah, that’s it Reg Presley.”
This first appeared in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal.
The other day I came across the word ‘runcible’ as in ‘runcible spoon’.
The word was invented by Edward Lear as in ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’.
There is something risible about the word ‘runcible’ as in ‘laughter provoking’ which is different than ‘laughable’, ‘laughable’ has connotations of contempt as in ‘derisible’ meaning ‘worthy of derision’, ‘derisible’ is almost an anagram of ‘desirable’ but back to ‘runcible’, there is a great bounce, a great versatility to the word:
he walked out the morning after humming a runcible tune
he had a runcible air about him an odour that lingered long after he had left the room.
the sun rose, red and runcible in a diffident sky
I once spent the best part of six hour plane journey trying to describe the sunrise. There was no inflight entertainment, I could have used the downloadable app but I couldn’t imagine watching out of date Jason Bateman movies for 6 hours on my phone, so I had picked up a Craig Johnson novel, The Cold Dish, to get me through the flight. This is the first novel in the Walt Longmire series. Walt is a sheriff in modern day Absaroka County, Wyoming. His wife has been dead 4 years and his life is a bit of a mess but there are various people looking out for him including his best friend, Henry Standing Bear. I know what you are thinking – an American law man with a Native American sidekick!! Anyway Craig Johnson navigates this well enough. There are a number of women in Walt’s life, including his daughter Cady, his dispatcher Ruby, a café owner Dorothy, Vic –his deputy, and Vonnie – a romantic interest. Vonnie is rich, beautiful, and troubled. They are all strong women and they don’t take no shit from Walt. Walt is at Henry’s bar talking to Vonnie when he gets a call from Vic that a body has been found in a gulley up in the mountains. Walt heads to the scene, the body is hard to get at and the crime scene is complicated by the fact that a herd of sheep has surrounded the body, shat upon it and chewed at the clothes. The body turns out to be Cody Pritchard, a local boy who was involved in the rape of a girl from the reservation and got off lightly. It’s early morning by the time the crime scene has been secured and there is this moment after a long night where Walt, the narrator, says : “I gazed back up to the patch of sage and scrub weed and watched the sun free itself from the red hills”. This is what amazes me about novelists, they have to handle character, plot, dialogue and create a world for characters to inhabit, for events to occur and they still find time to come up with lines like I have just quoted. So that was it for me, I spent the rest of the flight trying to come up with different ways to describe the sunrise.
As for the book, it’s well worth a read. Craig Johnson creates believable characters, characters to care about, to root for and the whole thing meanders along laconically with lots of witty banter and joshing – the kind of joshing you would find in a small town cafe at 10 in the morning, one of those cafes with gingham tables and a robust waitress with chemically damaged hair who won’t take any shit from the bunch of plaid shirted retired guys who turn up every morning to shoot the breeze.
the sun rose, red and runcible in a diffident sky .
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
Write a dream poem using its language and rhetoric and dark sense. What moony light does it cast on the day? If you care, add to the poem or a note with any associations from waking life that the dream seems to be commenting on. If the dream is your unconscious speaking to you, what is it trying to help your waking writing mind to see?
My sister died recently after a very short illness. She was the eldest, there are six of us. I had the dream described in the above poem around the time she died. A family , particularly a large family is, in some ways, a collection of vantage points and we lost our top vantage point, the one who had seen it all. Now five seems like a very small number.
They’re taking photographs down by the water in front of the cubist whale float planes take off from the harbor the mountains slumber in the morning haze.
Inside the convention center paragraphs of opaque prose attempt to describe the genius of Vincent, Vincent van Gogh.
But if painting is the medium there is no need for go-betweens it’s all there on the canvas the painting is what the painting seems.
That poetic hum your ear always on the alert for the cadence in the everyday, that unconscious internal rhyme there’s a barber shop on Dunbar Street; or that line that requires a non sequitur she was a woman before her time and you say to everyone’s irritation in a town lost to time. Then when you find that seed that germ of a poem you are lost to all around – family, colleagues, friends your head in the clouds; and when you poke your head through the accumulated cumulus you come face to face with another poet who says that last line’s a bugger, eh? and you say it most certainly is it most certainly is.
Outside the Gates of Hades sits a cross-eyed toad beside a burnt-out serpent a broker and a phone.
Outside the Gates of Heaven sits an angel in disguise beside a corpulent bishop with ecstasy in his eyes
and the sign on the gate says:
Closed for Renovation no judgement today if you’re looking for accommodation clear off, go away.
God is on vacation taking a well-earned break there’s only so much suffering one true God can take
So, get your ass back down there be good to everyone drink lots of water and try to get along.
Brendan’s challenge this week over at Earthweal is to write of a voyage to the Otherworld. As he explains:
I have used the medium of Irish myth, but voyages to the Otherworld are universal. Journey there this week from inside your own story-cycle, and report on the news you find there.
I was born and educated in Ireland and that education did cover Irish (pagan/Christian) myths and legends but the dominant Otherworlds by that point had become Heaven and the everlasting fire of Hell. Irish Catholicism is indeed a rough beast . Somewhere in between these poles, the minor worlds of Purgatory and Limbo floated. So when I read Brendan’s quote I thought of this poem (previously posted)
Note on the title:
Thispoem title came about because, for a brief period, I was listening to prog metal. Brief because, like all things prog, the talent rarely matches the ambition, the concepts. An exception would be Pink Floyd ( Piper at the Gates of Dawn) who were a progressive band but they were successful because they could write songs and had one of the best lyricists in rock, the concepts were secondary. Prog metal players, from what I can tell , are accomplished musicians – the guitarists can play at incredible speeds and the drummers sound like they are descended from the octopus but the lyrics are banal at best and the melodies vestigial. The album titles, though, are always interesting and that’s where this poem started – I was playing around with making up titles for prog metal concept albums…the poem evolved from there.
(Willie’s Oasis…a song about looking for drink in all the wrong places)
This a song from my collaboration with John Mitchell (The Mitchell-Feeney Project).
I wrote the lyrics and John did pretty much everything else (except the violin)
The lyric was adapted from a poem I wrote called “A Dry Country in Arkansas”. The poem was published some time ago in Cyphers, a long -running Irish literary magazine. When I gave the lyric to John, I had no concept what kind of song would emerge, I couldn’t have been happier with what he did. I’ll let John explain…
“Willie’s Oasis” turned out to be quite a challenge musically. I loved the feeling of the tune, that southern heat out on Highway 82, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t hear the music. I tried using my electric guitars, my acoustics, I even tried my piano, but no matter what key I played in and what chords I used, I couldn’t make it work. So I decided to use technology, and I searched through some of my pre-recorded samples and found this rough sounding, bluesy guitar riff. As soon as I started to work with it and edit the sample, add a few more samples, voila, “Willie’s Oasis” appeared.The only live things I put on this tune were my handclaps and my vocals.
I decided that it needed something else, so I called a wonderful violin player friend of mine named Ben Mink and asked if he would put some fiddle on the tune. Modern technology allows me to send him my tracks, he puts on the violin and sends it back to me via e-mail. We were never in the same room. I expected him to put some real down-home fiddle on, but he completely fooled me and played the most smoking electric violin parts that took the song over the edge. “
(A note about the violin player, Ben Mink: Ben co wrote “Constant Craving” with KD Lang. The song won KD Lang a Grammy in 1993. Ben and KD Lang also got co-writing credits on a Rolling Stones song, “Anybody Seen My Baby”, because the Stones noticed that the chorus of their song had similarities to the chorus of “Constant Craving”).
The sun with rare generosity
beats down on the solar panels
on the roof of Vincent’s log cabin.
The first sentence of his organic novel
–The abattoir, for once, was silent –
sits alone on his laptop screen.
This is the seed from which will spring
plot, character, content.
He gets up, walks out through the kitchen door
through the tortured arch of his driftwood arbor
and into the vegetable garden
where he urinates in a jagged arc
sprinkling life-giving nutrients
on the unsuspecting butter lettuce.
Returning to his desk
he taps out another sentence: With his mother’s mop, he wipes the blood from the kitchen floor.
Why so morbid?
It’s warm, he’s feeling drowsy,
he detects a faint signal from a long-dormant source
like the distant ping from a submarine
at the bottom of the ocean.
He should invite someone for dinner,
the lady who sells jam at the Saturday market, perhaps,
or the angry sculptress – she of the tangled hair,
the scrap metal raptors, the acetylene scent.
The jam lady it is.
Bottle of wine from the retired lawyer’s vineyard,
salmon from the gnarled fishermen down at the dock,
try a little humor,
ask her if raspberry jam is a male preserve,
make a nice salad. What’s the worst that could happen?
Last night it teemed with rain, now the garden fence steams in the morning sun.
That fence has been there oscillating between disrepair and repair since we moved in.
The posts are the weak points, when you dig down the ground teems with wood bugs and weevils gorging on that succulent cedar.
The garden shed is also cedar. One summer, a family of skunks made their home underneath it. They would regularly strut across the lawn in single file father, mother and two young skunks tails cocked, sphincters primed afraid of nothing or no one. I wrote a haiku about them and then when they were no longer of literary value I spread moth balls all around the entrance to their hole, an internet remedy which did not work. It’s a tad quixotic or ironic or both, isn’t it, trying to use smell to get rid of skunks.
All that summer as we sat drinking on the deck and the evening sun warmed the cedar shed, the odour of skunk and moth balls that naphthalene-mercaptan cocktail would hit us in gusts, in waves like halitosis at a party and inevitably, invariably I would turn to anyone within boring distance and say, as our noses twitched in disgust, “Isn’t nature marvelous? Isn’t nature marvelous?”
This poem was originally inspired by a prompt from Brendan over at earthweal, see below. The theme today over at dverse, courtesy of Claudia is:
“Write about your own, your neighbour’s or your city’s garden – or one that only exists inyour imagination. Write about harvest, growth, decay – where ever the word “garden” takes you.“
So I thought I would give the poem another outing!
The prompt from Brendan over at earthweal was this:
“For this week’s challenge, TEEM. Write a poem that introduces the reader to the environment you live in –a landscape shaped by time with a culturally diverse ecosystem (with human, animal and non-animal elements). Widen the focus, deepen the gaze and green the voice. “
The great TS Eliot once wrote:”April is the cruelest month”. I’m not one to make facile connections but April is also National Poetry Writing Month or NaPoWriMo which is about as un-poetic as an acronym can get and now….
poets are dutifully posting a poem a day the blogosphere is loud with words like babble, ripple, burble, unfurl glow, glitter, shine, glisten winds are blowing suns are setting dawns are breaking waves are crashing on every available shore and birds, yes, birds are chirping, trilling, twittering, even singing, nature is under siege; but I have to admit I’m not up to it I don’t have the diligence, the discipline the creative bandwidth besides it’s the second day of April and I’m one day behind already nothing constipates a poet like a deadline.
Versions of this poem appear every year around this time
Stopdraggingthepanda 