You read the newspaper
and there they are
on every page
conclusions drawn
from wisps of smoke.
There is no big data
just sad data.
You Facetime, Whatsapp, Zoom
and always there’s that moment
when you look at that small rectangle
in the top right hand corner of the screen
and think “Ahh for fuck’s sake
is that really me?”
In the absence of the new
the brain feeds on itself
like an animal caught in a snare,
in a dream you drive to a town in British Columbia
which for some reason is called Trenton
you attend a meeting at a hotel
where everyone knows you
but you know no one.
You walk out into a vast square
full of white marble statues
of a man lost in thought
elbow on knee, chin on fist.
You watch Germans play soccer
in an empty stadium
and it’s not a dream.
You take your bike
down to the Fraser River
and cycle through Southlands
past the stables and the houses of the rich,
horses, but no courses,
a steaming mound of dung balls
decorates the road
that Covid sun is shining
and no one is making hay.
The challenge this week over at earthweal is “Vast Particulars”.
“Illustrate the changing tenor of the time with a snapshot or observation or tale which is both vast and particular”
The signs along the highway
are leaking semiotic fluid
psychotic cacti strike a calculated pose
linguistic lizards parse the parched desert floor
Slim’s feeling demotic,
neurotic, anecdotal, over-used
he’s looking for a sanctuary
the fisherman and the shoes
he’s got those
needle in a haystack
peripatetic blues.
This is a response to Brendan’s challenge over at earthweal ……..The Perilous Chapel
“This week’s challenge is about finding that Chapel and a way through it. Where have you found it, what perils did you endure, how is it linked to the Grail you seek? What is that poetry? And what initiation is required to transform modernity into Earthdom?”
The poem above is an edit of a previous post, it’s more about the journey than the arrival…..here’s another take
The Road (re-mix)
the sun beats down like judgement
on the armor-plated road
you just called out God and the Devil
and neither of them showed
there’s a sour smell of whiskey sweat
on the air-conditioned air
sometimes you think you care too much
and sometimes you just don’t care
in a dream you see an angel
an angel with a gun
you’re five miles outside of nowhere
and you’re stuck inside a song.
Richard Penniman
Little Richard
not just any man
a pioneer of rock and roll
twelve bars and no holds barred
and all about that one thing:
Molly likes to ball
Sally has everything that Uncle John needs
Sue knows just what to do
a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom.
– the tow-headed carnival barker
leading us always to an empty tent?
– the pointy-headed tyrant
with skin as white as the frozen steppes?
– the lacquered mandarin,
with a talent for oppression?
heroes don’t communicate
through a medium that gets its name
from the sound a small bird makes
heroes don’t arrive in golf carts
heroes don’t arrive in limousine cavalcades
heroes ride in on steeds
metaphorically at least
and those steeds are trusty
that’s all, the colour doesn’t matter.
This is in response to Brendan’s prompt over at earthweal
The prompt is MODERNITY’S HERO QUEST, who will be the knight in shining armour to lead us out of this pandemic into the brave new world. I may have got the intent wrong but as Gilda Radner used to say “never mind”. Either way I encourage you to visit earthweal and take in Brendan’s informative, challenging and entertaining editorials. I know, I know, so many blogs to follow but this one is worth your while and hell, we need blogs that stretch a bit, sometimes haiku just does not cut it.
Once on a bus
across the Altiplano
from Puno to Cusco
I watched the movie Interstellar, starring
Matt McConaughey.
Matt’s a clever feller,
I just said that
to rhyme with Interstellar
no one
says feller anymore
anyway, it appears that
time is a line
our lives are
moving along
and we can only
move forward along
that line, never back,
but there is a loophole
or a wormhole,
to be exact,
way out there
in outer space
and if one travels
to outer space
and passes through
that wormhole
one can visit
the multiplex cinema
where one’s life
is playing
and view
any previous point
on the line one’s life
is travelling on
problem is
when one returns
to earth, it’s fifty
years later and
everyone one knows
is either dead or dying,
thus the line one’s life
is travelling on
is irreversibly altered
that’s the catch
which by the way
is different than
a loophole.
In which Diane Keaton
plays an American woman
recovering from the pain
of a recent divorce.
Sandra Oh will feature
as her quirky sidekick,
and smoldering local love interest
will be provided by
Xavier Bardem or Antonio Banderas –
they’re not Italian
but if you want “smoldering”
you’ve got to call in the Spanish.
We’ll need a Brit,
Maggie Smith, perhaps,
as a sage but ageing dowager
and the local priest must be wry and twinkling,
Morgan Freeman, I’m thinking,
an explanation will be needed
as to how he got there.
Richard Gere will appear
near the end,
as the ex-husband
rich and massively contrite
now that the younger woman has left him,
the philandering bastard.
And as for the umbrage
taken by whom
because of what
you’ll just have to wait for the movie.
The challenge from Lilian over at dverse is to write a poem about a place you have travelled to, well I’ve been to Umbria and this poem kind of plays around with that!
the sun is setting in the west (no surprises there)
that sundown breeze is blowing white petals like confetti
from the cherry tree into my beer
tap tap tap
behind my back a woodpecker does his nut
on the silver birch tree;
two weeks of sunshine
an indecent amount for Vancouver,
that low spring sun, long shadows,
everything over-lit
like in a David Lynch movie
or The Truman Show
or one of those movies
where humans are being turned into aliens
one by one, and no one knows who the real people are;
a black-capped chickadee hops along the deck rail
bush tits flit from bush to bush
a fat crow waddles across the lawn
like a cardinal across St. Peter’s Square
a blue jay watches from the roof of the garden shed,
and I wonder how do I know all these bird names
I mean, crows, fair enough, but bush tits?
black capped chickadees? Is this the movie
where I wake up and I’m a nature poet
wandering lonely as a cloud,
where I’m from, the clouds are never lonely where the clouds are never lonely
didn’t Bono write a song about that
or was it the streets that were never lonely
anyway, fuck this for a lark
hey, isn’t that a zebra finch?
aren’t they native to Australia?
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal.
born identical twins,
they became indentured servants
to Lord Denton,
a wealthy landowner
who believed passionately
in the benefits
of dental care,
consequently
the identical twins
lived a long
indentured life
and never endured
the indignity of dentures.
no dumbass in a MAGA hat
is going to solve this one
all the bluster you can muster
will do nothing at all,
remember that guy
who got first in the class
the one wearing glasses
who never got the girl
he’s the one who will save our asses
so get out of the way
you won’t be missed
this one will be solved by scientists.
The challenge over at earthweal is to write a poem about The Crossroad we are at. Well, this is possibly not the subtlest poem ever written but hey…..these are not subtle times.
The mind wanders
I think of a word that rhymes with ‘banker’
and marvel at how
in the middle of a global crisis
my brain still tilts
towards the trivial, the juvenile.
I try a sound poem
panic, pandemic, pandemonium
but it’s missing something,
panache, perhaps.
I make up a joke involving Peter Pan
but decide now is not the time to share it.
I detect the late onset of maturity
and feel depressed.
I text some friends,
we try to out-snide each other
but after a while
we are all chewing on the same bone.
I’m besieged by an idiocy of idioms –
the whole nine yards
the whole kit and caboodle
and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
I re-assess my relationship with surfaces
I can no longer count on
that counter to lean on,
and as someone inclined
to whistle past the graveyard
walk past the writing on the wall
I have to admit
that the object in the mirror
was a lot closer
than it first appeared.
I write a haiku
four in the morning moon shining on toilet bowl porcelain pathway.
Watch your back! Basho!
Taking part in open link weekend over at earthweal.
the stock markets bounce up and down
like a man who’s landed on a trampoline
landed on a trampoline
from the top of a tall building;
the analysts are nonplussed
nothing adds up
two plus two does not equal four,
only the postman comes to the door
we watch documentaries, comedy specials,
Scandinavian crime dramas cold as an autopsy table
we learn that Miles Davis was a creative genius
an addict and a hard man to live with;
we learn from a childhood friend of Joe Cocker
that as a young boy, Joe had two Weetabix every morning
we watch a Diane Keaton movie
she falls in love with an Irish tramp
and still anxiety crackles like static in the background.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
“There’s flies in the kitchen I can hear ’em there buzzing And I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today. How the hell can a person go to work in the morning And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.”
This is from “Angel from Montgomery” by John Prine……a life in 4 lines, says more than some novels.
There are many versions of this song but one of the best is by Bonnie Raitt and John Prine.
the trees look guilty
the ocean is ill at ease
no one’s fault, but still…..
the courts are empty
no tennis ball pock pock pock
Canada geese honk
eagles isolate
my face itches like crazy
demands to be touched
and those ducks, they don’t know squat
about social distancing.
Photo “Social Distancing”
The weekly challenge over at earthweal is to write a poem around the subject: CONNECTING HUMANS, WILDLIFE AND THE CORONA VIRUS. So I thought I would throw in this one. Maybe it’s not the connection intended, but it’s still on subject, I think. Check out Sherry’s excellent post at earthweal
It’s National Poetry Month
and all across the internet
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
all I want is one clear image
nailed to the page like a proclamation.
and wonders how to spin this one
how to make this one a win
in the empty parking lot of a big box store
a plastic glove pirouettes on the viral breeze
the toddler king thumbs through
The Totalitarian Dictators Hand Book
a present from that rascal, Stephen Miller
“hmmmmm….cull the herd leave the old and weak to die
already got that one going!
banish the teachers, scientists and intellectuals send them to the countryside to work on a farm
hey, that might work!”
but then he becomes a little wan, a little wistful
he wonders why he’s always the guy
standing on someone’s front lawn, shouting
“Look over here, look over here!”
while Miller and his gang ransack the house
and leave by the backdoor with the television
and the jewelry
he stares out at the White House lawn
and the suffering, beleaguered nation beyond
and thinks:
“Hey, I just realized the ‘Caps’ in Caps Lock stands for CAPITALS!!
I wonder how many people know that!!”
poster on the wall
Lennon at a piano
deconstructing Paul.
Perspective
imagine,
you, a frog
down a well,
above you
only sky.
Taking part in open link over at earthweal. This is obviously a re-post, I have not been inside a pub in Kitsilano or anywhere else for a few weeks. I was working on a few pandemic-related poems but it’s hard to keep pace with events.
The moon hung
like a searchlight
in the spangled sky
and we hung
out on
the deck.
A Whiter Shade of Pale
By the time ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ was recorded in 1967, Bob Dylan had already raised the bar very high in terms of what the public expected from a song lyric; song writers were now expected to be poets. This was a heavy load to carry as few songwriters had Bob’s poetic gift; as a result, bathos was everywhere.
Bathos: “an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous”.
There are, as I said, many examples from that era, but the one that always stands out in my mind is from the last four lines of the first verse of ” A Whiter Shade of Pale”:
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
when we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray.
I have to admit that when I first heard this song I had no idea what it was about. Why are sixteen vestal virgins leaving for the coast? What is a vestal virgin anyway? Who is the miller? I still don’t know, but I don’t think it really matters. It’s best to sit back, listen to the song and let your brain feed on the images and in no time at all the room will hum harder, the ceiling will fly away, you’ll think about maybe following the vestal virgins, you’ll skip a light fandango, turn cartwheels across the floor, all the time trying to avoid that waiter and his tray.
Notes:
The recorded version of the song has only two verses, but if you google the lyrics you will find four verses. Procol Harum sometimes included the extra verses in live performances but wisely left them out of the recording; they are not very good and diminish the song’s impact. As Bob Seger once sang:
Well those drifters days are past me now I’ve got so much more to think about Deadlines and commitments What to leave in, what to leave out
Bob Seger, ‘Against the Wind’
“What to leave in, what to leave out” – whether you are writing a song, poem, novel, short story, if you can solve that one you might be on the way to something good!
Stopdraggingthepanda 